Last Friday, I went back to the hospice where my late husband died…

I hadn't planned it…

In fact, I'd been at the neighbouring hospital having my annual mammogram. And, as I walked back to my van in the dusky darkness of the busy car park, I was drawn to the newer Hospiscare bungalow building which is set apart from the clinical corridors of the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital.

The receptionist recognised me.

And, I recognised her too.

Chatting to her took me back to the endless visits we made when Simon was in his last days and weeks. I remembered how kind and compassionate everyone was… and they remembered how tiny our girls were.

I asked if I could go and sit in the hospice chapel.

Of course, they said it was no problem… I could take my time.

I sat on the bench at the back of the little wooden room, snuggled up in my warm wooly layers… grateful for my furry snow boots.

I soaked up the familiarity of the little chapel... it is a peaceful space I'd used as a sanctuary when I lived at the hospice at the end of Simon’s life.

I lit a candle and nestled it with a couple of others in the bowl of grey sand.

And, I hit pause… to just be...

There I sat… breathing in the mix of clinical hospital smells, whiffs of canteen food and something else that I just couldn't find words for seven years ago… and I still can’t identify now.

In the silence of this religious room, I realised why I love the atmosphere of a place that is associated by so many with death...

An understanding dawned as to why I needed to be there again…

I felt close to Simon.

It was as though the years dropped away.

I could pretend that my husband’s skeletal frame was still cuddled in colourful patchwork blankets in the family room down the corridor, or maybe that he was sat on a cushion on the floor playing with our girls. His two tiny princesses who were only six and eight years old and who paid no conscious attention to the sub-cut drip or the drugs in a pouch round his waist that had become the norm.

Our girls are teenagers now.

They are processing their grief in their own way… they carry with them daily a heartbreaking sadness for a devoted daddy whose memory they struggle to recall without the help of photos and stories.

I knew I needed to head home to be with them, it’s a tricky time of year for us…

Simon’s birthday falls at the beginning of December, but there’s no cake, no candles… instead we use the day to remember him a different way by getting our Christmas tree… just as we did when he was alive.

But staying in the hospice chapel, just for a minute longer, I pretended to myself that we had been together recently… I recalled fondly what it was like to feel my gorgeous muscly hunk of a husband roll over in bed, throw his arm over my shoulder, move up close to me and murmur into my ear... "You know, I really love you so much".

I remembered how I felt as I lay squashed by his huge frame…

He didn’t need so say the words because I knew it back then, and it gives me great comfort now...

The magnitude of my love for him… it mirrored his for me… and that love endures as blissful memories and heavy grief today.

Now he’s dead, we are denied his phyiscal presence, but I take comfort that our girls were born into a family full of love. The love in our home is so great that Simon’s physical absence leaves behind a heartbreakingly painful grief.

Even now, all these years later, as I teach others to follow in my footsteps and Grow Life around Grief, the pain of loss remains. Yet we don't just go searching for rainbows, we find them... but the joy of seeing the beautiful colours only exist because we let the water flow.

Day-to-day life called and I knew I needed to return to the present reality of my widowhood life…

As I walked out of the little chapel, I past the door to the room where his body lay after he died, the room I kept returning to in the minutes and hours after he died. The receptionist had gone home, so I let myself out of the building and headed out into the cold. Memories flooded into my mind from everything I took in all around me… recalling the distinct smell of the place, the time we had a pizza party with the kids in Simon’s room, the endless military visitors who broke the nurses’ hearts, the time I told people he wasn’t going to make it.

In the dark of the car park, something I tell my clients dawned on me once again...

I have a choice...

Instead of being sad that he has gone… I can be grateful for so much:

The magical time that we had him with us
The inspirational legacy he left behind and
The memories that no-one can ever take away

The grief education I have learnt since Simon died has taught me about the importance of ‘continuing bonds’... Grief is not something that we “move on” from, nor do we “leave it behind”... instead we carry it with us and we find new ways to incorporate the person who died into our world.

If this blog has touched you, please reach out and send me an email: emma@rainbowhunting.co.uk and for a daily dose of what goes through my mind… go check out my Instagram account!