Today I’d like to pay tribute to the two people who vet the content of this journal. They’ve never met me and they’ve never met each other, but I trust them implicitly, and one of these days I’m going to take them both out and get them horribly drunk.

David Robarts and Sarah Snaydon come from wildly differing backgrounds, have divergent political beliefs, and live hundreds of miles away from each other and from me. Our commonality lies in the fact that we’re all sad bastards without partners.

Sarah first wrote to me in November 2002. Her husband Geoff had died on the day this site was born, and she’d typed a short, unsentimental note to thank me for what I’d written. The note was unremarkable and the language plain, but what made me sit up and take notice was that it was typed in red. Her e-mail contained not a trace of self-pity, but her true emotions bled from the screen. I was witness to the exsanguination of a widow. She’d lost her husband, her lover, her life-blood, and she was trying to hold herself together in order to thank me. She had no need to thank me.

David wrote to me shortly afterwards. His e-mail was dark and expansive, bleak and unremitting. The ferocity of the medical facts that bombarded me made me weep, and I found it hard to imagine how any man could hold himself together under such horrific circumstances. David could only stand helplessly by and watch, as his wife’s flesh was greedily consumed by the ravages of meningococcal septicaemia. Titania died slowly; died by inches, lost both legs and eventually lost the will to go on. She was a remarkably courageous woman who left behind four young children and a broken hearted man.

Life seemed hopeless for David and Sarah in the winter of 2002, and I really worried about the chances of either of them ever regaining any sense of optimism about the future. David’s life was a nightmare jugging act of baby feeding, school runs and supper detail. Sarah had two teenage daughters to bring up single-handed, and a teaching job to hold down. Most people who write to me for help will only write once, some people write to thank me for replying so promptly, but generally two e-mails is about all I get. Sarah and David kept writing, and through their e-mails I was able to gauge their state of mind. I wanted to carry them both in the early days. I wanted to wrap them both up in my arms and make all the hurt and the pain disappear, but all I could do was keep on writing and hope that they would find the strength to carry on.

The question I get asked most often is, ‘When am I going to start feeling better?’ I try to explain that grief is a journey, a long and difficult journey to self-belief and acceptance. David and Sarah were walking along a road and all they could see in the distance was a sign saying ‘Dead End’. But I could see farther. I couldn’t make their journey any easier, but I knew I could walk beside them, offering encouragement and understanding. I knew they would be fine, because they each possessed two vital assets: a sense of humour, and a positive outlook.

Watching other people come though the grieving process is like teaching a young child to ride a bike without stabilisers. When you lose your partner it is almost impossible to maintain any kind of mental or emotional balance. You lurch from depression to mania but lack the necessary mental strength to gain forward momentum. In the first year David and Sarah frequently wobbled, but somehow managed to remain upright. Sarah took her first holiday as a single mother and sent me a photograph when she returned home. She’d hooked up with a couple of delightful gay men; unthreatening, supportive holiday companions who gave her the opportunity to laugh for the first time in months. David gradually took to the role of single parent, and allowed each of his four children the chance to fully express their grief. They helped him design Titania’s headstone, and now they are helping him to rebuild his life.

Sarah’s daughters are still struggling to come to terms, with the loss of their father, and I know that Sarah freely admits that she still cannot describe herself as truly happy. But she’s making remarkable progress and has just returned to the field of amateur dramatics, which I know is something that she thought she’d never do. She no longer writes in terse, red sentences, but instead chooses to write hysterically funny, wonderfully expansive e-mails, which tell the story of a woman who is re-discovering her self-confidence and her voice.

David is now strong enough to be able to offer emotional support to others, and is feeling happy and confident about the future. His e-mails are funny, eloquent and as singular as the malt that he’s no doubt enjoying at this very moment. He can be quite a stern critic, but I value his judgement because he’s got a much bigger brain than me.

Two people, seemingly unconnected, but joined by a mutual burden of grief, have walked along a road less travelled. I did nothing more than watch over them as they journeyed on through the darkness and out into the light; but I watched with pride, and I hope that I never lose sight of David Robarts and Sarah Snaydon.



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