Second blog of the day. Happy Anniversary ? ? ?

Yes, this is a second blog because to add it on to my previous one just would not do it justice.

You may have guessed from the title today is anniversary.  Not a happy anniversary but memories of happier times with the one person I have loved more than anything or anyone else in the world.

I hope wherever you are Stephen that you are at peace, free from pain and worry and illness.  I love you more and more with each passing hour, the pain cuts deeper and my heart feels heavier with each passing day.  You were the best thing that ever happened to me, you made every day with you a happy one, even when we disagreed you still managed to make me smile and I have never been able to be annoyed at you for long, your smile, your cheeky look, your sparkly eyes and your tender touch could make any troubles disappear, I wish you were here to do that now.

On this day in 2006 we became one, joined in the eyes of the law, of our family and of our friends.  You said it was the happiest day of your life, a life cut short but a life which touched so many.  I've lit some candles for you and us tonight.  Not a romantic night in but I know you loved our candlelit nights in.

You've not been far from my thoughts since you passed, this week has been tough and today especially so. I keep smiling though, I don't want to but I know many find my feelings, thoughts and emotions too much to deal with, for them I smile, I spare them the discomfort and hide it from the world, not just today but every day for many weeks now.

It has been nice to come home today, back to our home.  I know we had planned to go away this weekend, just escape, the two of us, similar to how we did last year.  I remember this weekend last year, getting away to the countryside, no phone signal, an open log fire and plenty of time to talk.  Those are happy memories, not a great time because we already had a hint of what may be, but, you smiled and stayed positive and never gave up.  You loved the simple things, a walk in the bracing winds, dodging the puddles or wiping the rain from your glasses, the weather never dampened your spirits or your zest for life and I try to keep that in mind to stay happy for you.

I saw this pebble a while ago, thought of you and bought it but it has heightened meaning and sentiment today.  I have also been very thoughtful this week about hope.  you never gave up hope, it stayed with you and with us to the very end.  I am learning to hope again.  Hoping for a brighter future, hoping I can learn to live with this pain and hoping that wherever you are you are safe and at peace.
I have noticed this week that Hope is your legacy to me, it is the one thing you have shown me and taught me which will always be with me, no matter how little money I have, how dark the days are or how long the nights are, it will always be there.  I saw this "token" on my first day in Cardiff and bought it,  I am seeing the hope around me.  Hopes for life, for a future and for a new beginning and for that I thank you.

I have re read you blog (click here) tonight from this day last year.  I was so proud of you then and still am.  The sign is still in the house in the same place you decided to put it where it would cheer you up every morning and give you a spark to light the fire that kept you driving forward.  I know I will "get there" eventually, in the meantime though I am continuing your blog. You are still an inspiration to many and even within the last few weeks I have had feedback from people who have found your journey an inspiration and comfort to them, in particular your approach to your treatment. 

Once again Happy Anniversary Stephen, thank you for the good times, you will be in my heart forever.

Till we meet again, 831 Pud xxx (Click here)

Decisions Decisions....

I really am trying hard to get back in to the swing of writing a blog on a daily basis.  I suppose if I am honest I became aware that my posts were being "monitored", I don't mean by my/our usual readers but "other" so it sort of put me off but now I realise that I cannot be criticised for expressing my feelings, opinions or facts, feelings and opinions are fine and as long as everything else is fact then that's fine.  In case you are sat there wondering "is it me?" the chances are that the answer is no, sorry.

Anyway, today I spent the most part of the morning on the phone, I spoke to a fried first, she has someone dear to her in the latter stages of cancer, it is so sad and it is easy to feel helpless because that's what you are.  It is so hard knowing you can't do anything other than wait for mother nature to take it's course, and hope it is swift.  I suppose we didn't have to suffer it for long, Steve's passing was relatively quick, it feels uncaring to see it 'written' down but until you experience it then you can't condemn it.  I won't explain, it is too painful and would take too long and I won't enter into debate about it either.

After that my next phone call was very different, funny, interesting and exciting all in one call.  Needless to say though I spent the largest part of my morning chatting.

This afternoon I logged on to work, I reduced my emails from well over 1200 up around 700, it's like looking at a time capsule.  I had a few emails today though, well not today but I saw them today from around the time Steve died, they really took the wind out of my sails, unexpectedly nice emails which made me think again, not just about Steve but also about what I have lost.  Not just though what I have lost but what his family have lost, his friends and his colleagues too.

About this I feel selfish really.  I have thought about my loss and that of his family and my family but what about his friends.  The friends who used to turn to him for support now have no one. The friends who would turn to Steve for advice and who would share secrets with him, he never told me who or what but I know he was always there for his mates.  I would like to think they can count me as a reasonable stand in for Steve but I know I cannot replace him or their history together and nor would I want to.  I guess I just realised they miss him too.

This evening I have been distracted again, not a bad thing I suppose but with the TV on in the background I am conscious that I no longer laugh at things I used to, I don't remember the last time I properly laughed, laughing without inhibition or worrying whether it is appropriate.

I do remember a time when I did laugh though.  It was the day after Stephens brain surgery last year.  Steve and I had booked tickets for a show in Bury, it's an LGBT event and we bought tickets for a friend and his hubby as a birthday present.  There was a local comedian, another comedian and some singers.  It was a good night despite everything else.  I wasn't going to go as it was the day after Steves surgery. He wanted me to go so I made a deal, I went to see him in the afternoon and depending on how well he was would depend on whether I went or not.  When I saw him in the afternoon he had made huge improvements from the previous night so I agreed to go.  

My parents went to see Steve that night and were amazed how well he was. He was discharged the following afternoon so that shows how quickly he made progress.  Major brain surgery on Wednesday and sent home with 36 surgical staples in his head on Friday.  That puts me in mind of another story though but I won't go in to it just now.

Anyway the show is on again this year, the same local comedian /compere and a few others, not sure if I can bring myself to go.  I want to as I had a really great laugh last year, the type of laughing which hurts your sides.  I am sure this year will be as funny but, (and there always seems to be a but), it is on the anniversary of Steve being given 12to 18 months to live.  I don't  know how I will feel.  I know Steve would want me to go again but I really don't know.  Here's the link: (not sure why the hyperlink won't work)

http://themet.biz/event/not_the_only_gays_in_the_village/1108/

It's a tough decision.  I don't want a Harry Potter repeat though where I sob all the way through but, I know there are a whole heap on anniversaries to come.  I really don't know.  I want to..... but I don't.......

No point in stressing about a decision now anyway, I'd need to see who else is up for going so I can think about it another time.  It's bed time now.

Goodnight,
Mark xXx

A day of thinking

This has not been a bad thing, the thinking has all been about someone. Else's project, someone elsess business idea and someone else's headache and excitement really but, let's start with yesterday.

As you know weekends have really been the toughest part of the week for me, those were the times Steve and I would find fun and interesting things to do, sometimes just shopping or doing nothing but it was with steve so being without him has made then extremely hard.

Yesterday I got up and wondered what to do. I looked at the weather and it was raining so a day out with the camera seemed off limits so I pondered, all this before getting out of bed.

I finally got up and decided I would have a day being creative, I decided some sewing was in order. I finally settled on making a handbag for a friend. It's. Up cycled (new word for recycled) from all sorts of stuff but I spent the largest part of the day on it. It was good distraction therapy because whilst I did think about steve I was too busy to get emotional. It was good therapy really. After that I made a necklace and did a few other things too so all in all a. Very creative day. I spent some time online last night but nothing to speak of so it was off to bed at a reasonable time.

Today I got up and phoned work because they had asked me to call today, I sorted a few other things then showered and got dressed. A friend came for lunch, I made a fish risotto which was lovely then we sat and chatted about her ideas. The plans are huge but, they look achievable as each element of the big idea is quite manageable for her. It looks exciting. We also spoke about a new accolade she has been awarded and how it can be 'used', again this all sounds very "cloak and dagger" but I guess this isn't really the right place to publicise her plans, although her 'thing' is public I don't feel my blog is the right place for it.... I think will understand my reasoning... I. Hope.

This evening I have been speaking to T at BT Buddies about the Corrie storyline about Brain Tumours, its a difficult topic and we each have thoughts on how it could be done better but, the main thing is that the story is running and it is raising awareness and that is all that matters.

Well it is almost bed time here for me, I have been reading a few blogs about brain tumours tonight, I wish I could stop them all as nobody should have to go through what I am going through now and what Steve and I went trough since September, I can't though and it hurts.

Well tomorrow is a new day, I am tying to keep on this upward slope of being OK so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Goodnight xxx Mark xxx

Gay Widower

I sat up until the early hours of this morning reading about widowers. I wasn’t tired, as I put in last night’s blog I just have too much going on in my head right now, some things are just there and needn’t be and others are and need to be but I don’t want to deal with them. I thought I’d share an excerpt of one of the articles.


I can completely identify with almost all of this.

Grief is madness--ask anyone who's been there. They will tell you it abates with time, but that's a lie. What drowns you in the first year is a force of solitude and helplessness exactly equal in intensity to the love you had for the one who's gone. Equally passionate, equally intimate. The spaces between the stabs of pain grow longer after a while, but they're empty spaces. The cliches of condolence get you back to the office, back to your taxes and the dinner table--and for everyone else's sake, you collaborate. The road of least resistance is paved with the gravel of well-meaning friends, rather like the gravel that cremation leaves.


Paul Monette, Last Watch of the Night

Becoming a widower is a process. And it is a process the surviving partner shares with his loved one. A continuous process, it begins the moment that one is forced to half-consciously accept that you are about to lose someone very close and may not end until even many years later. Widowerhood more or less occurs in three phases. The socially accepted year or so of grief after you've lost your partner is merely the middle period, flanked on one side by a period of widowerhood in which your companion is still alive, and on the other side by a period of widowerhood long after he is dead.

If your partner's death follows a long illness like Cancer or AIDS, during the first phase your partner is still alive. The grieving begins with the various losses his illness starts to impose on your life as your relationship changes from an equal partnership into an unequal dependency. This early grieving is almost always overlooked because of the external distraction caused by dealing with hospitals, labs, doctors, social workers, sometimes ambulances, police, lawyers, various business and governmental bureaucracies, and enormous amounts of data and new routines. Amidst all this, the two of you are forced to renegotiate your partnership contract.

At the same time, something even more subtle, and insidious, is occurring: you are learning to deal with him being gone. If you doubt that, speak to anyone whose loved one has left home for the first time with some minor symptom of AIDS requiring a short stay in the hospital. The fear and panic -- or denial and frozen emotions -- these first week-long hospitalizations cause may seem greatly exaggerated overreactions to others. On the contrary, they are often healthy, early recognitions of the widowed future.

The second phase following a partner's death is when your loss is complete and obvious and this phase also has its hidden dangers. The support network, so useful during your loved one's illness and death, is often suddenly removed at this stage. People you've come to rely on often vanish, incorrectly thinking you have no need for them in your life. Others, hoping to help you, or perhaps feeling guilty about your loss and their helplessness, attempt to push you through your grieving at an unreasonable speed -- perhaps pulling you into a constant chain of social events and distractions, so you won't stay home and mope. This doesn't recognize your special need to be alone more than before, partly to rest from the mental, emotional and sometimes physical exertions you've just gone through, sometimes just for you to try to remember your loved one whose presence in your life is fading so quickly and sadly.

The third phase is the least obvious and least talked about part of widowerhood. Paul Monette again proved himself to be the gay community's bard, describing his extended mourning for two different lovers in painfully eloquent essays in Last Watch of the Night. Long after the world and those around you have ceased to deal with your great loss, you're still stuck with it. Often new information about your loved one, or simmering resentments about his life suddenly surface and must be dealt with. Bills, letters, and legacy details can take a long time to show up and are upsetting or infuriating.

In some cases, the challenge is merely that your partner has so defined your life, that now you are completely thrown on your own, and must redefine who you really are as you did when you were an adolescent. It is a difficult, often harrowing time, yet also a potentially wonderful period and crucial to any further growth in life.

Most likely all people who have buried a spouse remain intimately connected to the deceased and to that relationship long after their conscious mourning has ended. In the last decade an extensive literature has evolved about grief, but until very recently, little or no recognition has been given to the grief of homosexual men who survive the death of a partner or friend.

Intense anger, whether at the unfairness of life, at God, at the cause of death, at the deceased or just being in the unenviable position of having to pick up the pieces and rebuild a life is typical when grieving a lover. When a partner dies, a man has no choice but to become a widower. How actively he accepts or rejects the identity of a widower will determine how he deals with all the angers. Recognizing that there are numerous good reasons to be angry, and expressing and integrating that anger are essential components of adjusting to widowerhood.

This is an excerpt taken from:


Gay Grief and Gay Widowers


by Michael Shernoff, MSW


Published in LGNY, September 1, 1997, Issue 62


1997 Michael Shernoff

4 Weeks on and it's a good day...

I know!  I didn't expect to say that either and, I know there are a few others around me who thought the same.  That said though I don't know how tomorrow will be etc but I am not going to worry about it because today was good.

I sort of dreaded today, a whole 4 weeks to the day since Steve died, it has gone so fast but feels like an eternity.  As every minute passes I still expect a text or call from him, a silly email or just for him to come and give me a hug and ask what I'm up to.  It isn't going to happen but it doesn't stop my brain thinking (somewhere out of my control) that it will happen.

Today though was also going to be a tough one because of something I volunteered to do for www.btbuddies.org.uk .  As many of you know they have supported Steve and I with information and guidance and generally being 'there' since his diagnosis, they were one of his chosen charities, (which incidentally you can still donate to at: http://www.justgiving.com/teams/StephenFaccendaakaEnidWhiplash.)  Today BT Buddies have run a course in Wrexham called "Coping Together", it is for newly diagnosed Brain Tumour patients and their carers or partners etc.  It was a full day and included a detailed talk this morning from a Consultant neurosurgeon, Andrew Brodbelt, about the different types of tumour, their grading and how they 'look' and how they are treated.

It made for a tough session but, although learning even more about tumours may seem like closing the door after the horse has bolted, (I had similar thoughts initially too - what more do I need to know other than it killed my Steve?), it was actually interesting and beneficial to be there and hear a Consultant from a different hospital not connected in any way to Steve and not even knowing of Steve, saying what treatments are for Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), what the follow up scan timetables are, the difficulties in treating them and their characteristics etc, everything was consistent with what I had heard Steve's consultant say to him.  It sort of re-assured me that Steve had the best care possible and available in this country and, as he outlined the pro's and con's of some new treatments, his concerns about them and reasons why they are not used more this again served to convince me that Steve had the best possible care.  In fact listening to him and hearing about the cancers and their effects and hearing some of the other speakers really made me appreciate even more how brave Steve was and it made me even more proud of him and especially proud of his positive outlook, (notice I say positive? He was NEVER in denial, he always accepted and acknowledged the possibilities but remained positive despite this).

The other speakers today spoke about the psychological effects of living with a brain tumour and Epilepsy and brain tumours.  I could identify with a huge amount of the psychological effects of living with a tumour but they related to me in grief, how I have dealt with losing Steve and how I am dealing (or not) with where I am "at" right now.  I suppose it is the same as a tumour victim may grieve for the future they feel they may have lost, I certainly feel Steve and I grieved for the last 9 months on the loss of our future.  That doesn't mean sobbing all day but it means accepting that we are not going to get old together and have matching OAP Scooters, we wouldn't end up sat like Waldorf and Stadler (the old guys in the box in the Muppet Show), bitching about people in the street and we wouldn't ever be making the mistake of getting our dentures mixed up in a glass in the bathroom. 

We grieved not for what we had lost, because we cant lose old age because we didn't have it but we lost those thoughts of an old age.  We moved our goalposts a little and aimed for being on our boat within 12 months, for perhaps going on a holiday to see Leon in Israel later this year and we planned to make Christmas presents again this year so we could give handmade gifts, (which we knew would become even more precious if one or other of us were not around).  We didn't envisage having to bring the goalposts SO close but we still lived a full life and planned for the future as best we could, (incidentally 'we' will still be doing most of that it's just that the responsibility for them now falls solely to me).  Anyway, after him the Epilepsy woman spoke, if I am honest I didn't pay a lot of attention as it was not relevant to me, (and Steve's ONLY seizure/fit was the one that saw him off so not a nice thought).

I spent a sizable amount of the day too talking with other patients and carers about their tumours and also about Steve and his/our coping mechanisms.   A few people asked where he was, why had he chosen not to come etc and when told why he wasn't there I got the looks of shock, embarrassment, sympathy and confusion as to WHY I would choose to be there so soon after his death.  One lady burst in to tears on me... (I didn't like to tell her it should be me crying).  I explained Steve would want to help others and, if my being there helped others then that is what I will do.  I explained I volunteered and could have opted out at any time but chose not to.  Some 'got' why I was there and some didn't but they each thanked me for coming and for being so open and honest and that was appreciated.

This all seems pretty OK until you realise that this afternoon I had a small presentation to do for www.btbuddies.org.uk , as I said I was a volunteer and Natalya was naturally cautious about me doing it as she was also only too aware how soon it all is, it could have gone one way or the other with the potential for me getting Brain Tumour overload and having a complete meltdown.  As you guessed i didn't have a meltdown, the presentation was well received and I felt better for being able to do that and bring a little hope or comfort to those in the room, one said I was an inspiration, I didn't feel it but I thanked him.  I just did what I thought was the right thing to do, right for me as well as for Steve and for BT Buddies.

So there you have it, that is why it has been a good day.  Just 4 weeks on from Steve dying I have been able to help others on their brain tumour journey, something which was (is) devastating (not devestating as one of the presenters today had written),  has now been turned into a positive and is helping other people.  Just another way Steve is continuing to help people even AFTER his death.

Following on from that I have come home this evening and had 2 really nice messages, one from my Aunt (although she is only really old enough to be my big sister, but as she hates Aunt I will use Aunt) and from my Sister, both of which really made me smile.  Thank you both xxx

And finally, in proper newsreader fashion I thought as it is 4 weeks since Steve died I would post a pic of him.  It is one of my favourites.  I love the glint in his eye.  This picture was taken in Chester the morning after a large night out in Chester.  We had been outside a pub or club the night before and looked in through the hat shop window.  There, we both saw the red top hat, we both turned to each other and said, "I want one".  We loved the look of them and as we both had evening tailcoats which we used on stage we decided to buy a red hat to wear with them.  We thought red basque, stockings or fishnets, tailcoat and top hat..... there are pictures on www.troubleonline.co.uk of Steve (as Miss Whiplash) in that very costume.

We found the shop the following day and despite our horrendous hangovers we both got SOOO excited about having new hats to wear, we bought one each, strolled around town like the cats that got the cream and  then went home not buying another thing because we had only gone for our hats. I always thought Steve suited a hat.

This hat is the very same one the funeral director, Shirley, wore at Steve's funeral, it seemed a fitting tribute to him for her to wear his hat in honour of him.  She looked good in it too but not half as handsome as Steve.  I know I am biased but I still thinks he looks great considering he, (and I) had the mother of all hangovers!

Well I shall say goodnight now, sorry it's a long one but hopefully you feel better for reading something positive, I certainly feel better for writing it, for thinking it and for being there today in memory of Steve.