I’ve written my healthy husbands eulogy

This title is going to have you believe that I am suffering greatly from severe pregnancy hormones and have decided to move to a female only camp and dance in the rain. Aha! That is not the case at all….well not 99% of the time.

I was inspired to put this down in words while I am still getting enough sleep to appreciate how much I love my husband. Ugh isn’t this post gross? I’m pregnant, happy and love my husband, that is anti Jeremy Kyle right there. I’m sorry. However I promise I do deserve this and I only know this because of all the times those options seemed so far from my reach.

I’ve been at a number of funerals. Some I attended to support the person grieving but many of them were because I was the person grieving. If you have read my other blog posts (although I appreciate I’m mainly talking to myself) you will see that I lost my own Mom when I was 18.  I met my husband 7 months later and was welcomed into the warm embrace of his mother soon after. Four years ago we also lost her; this came 5 months after the sudden death of a good friend. 6 months ago I then miscarried, losing our first baby at 12 weeks. Each loss chips away, sometimes you can build yourself back up but for me there are still chinks in my foundations.

But what I hope you see is that I really do deserve the pregnant, happy and love my husband moment, however I don’t take for granted that you don’t always get what you deserve.

So the eulogy.

It’s weird and I know it, however I think it is partly a response to the loss of my Mother. She died 10 days before Christmas from a heart attack. She had been fluey during the week and was going to the doctor on the Saturday. I rang the house on my lunchbreak from work to check in on her but no-one answered, I didn’t think too much about that. Three hours later my Dad arrived to my workplace, took me to a quiet room and told me Mum was dead. She went to the GP, was sent to the hospital and died right there on the bed just after she had arrived. There would be no goodbye hug or kiss; no I love you, no more chances to feel her skin warm. She was dead.

Since that day I am in an endless and sometimes exhausting battle with myself to not over react to real life. I spent some time afterwards not wanting to get close to anyone, then letting myself fall in love and subsequently fighting all my urges to wrap the people I love in cotton wool and try to never let them hurt or get sick. This is not healthy for me, but mostly it’s not healthy for them. A cold really is just a cold.

It’s this fear of loss, especially of sudden death, that has me thinking about my husband’s eulogy. I hate funerals but I also find great comfort in them. What I hate most is that of all the days in your life to be alive your funeral  really is the one. People talk about you with such love and compassion. They show how much they miss you in tears, in silence, in shock. They remember the greatest days of your life with humour and sadness. They forgive your bad days, and question why they ever felt anger towards you.

I have survived losses and sad days. I have suffered from seizures brought on by grief which took me years to learn how to prevent. I learnt to write again when those seizures damaged the nerves in my arm, and, I stood on the alter and spoke about my mother when I was 18 years old and absolutely broken. I know grief, I know loss, I know survival.

However then there is my husband and when I think of him (on those loving days) I do worry about how I can survive without him and what I need to do in life to ensure I will not regret upon death.

This is when I think of his eulogy; strangely it usually comes upon me when driving. I recall to myself the last thing we said to each other. The last touch we had. I remember the strength of his character, the gentleness in which he approaches our love and the loyalty that he gives to it. I think of how he cared for his Mom when she was ill, of his tears when our friend died and how he works to keep her memory alive. I think of stories from drunken nights, the dances we have together and the faces he pulls that make me laugh so hard I want to pee myself.

I think of when I told him we were pregnant with our first baby, how his beautiful magical face lit up. Then I think of how he treated me when the baby was lost. When I told him he should be with someone who can grow a healthy child, he told me there was no point having a child with someone else; it was only my child that he wanted to be a father to. I remember how he talks about our growing child now, how he sings to it and speaks to it and I’m pretty sure will also make this baby laugh until it pees.

I think of his long gorgeous body, his big eyes that I fall into and his juicy lips that I know so well. I think of how his hair feels when I rub it, how he smells and the sound of his voice which is like music to my ears. I think of seeing him when I get home, and then I think of what would happen if I didn’t. My heart quickens up and my breath burns. Of course I cry, every time I cry.

Then I go home and I tell him I love him and why, and I make another memory to add to my list. Most importantly though, I have reminded myself how much I love him and why. I appreciate what I have, I gain perspective into my life and what is important to me. It calms me to know that I have found a great love, that whatever the future holds I will have known a love that hurts to live without.

I hope to never walk a day on this earth without my husband, and he without I. Ideally old age will take us together, holding hands and slipping into sleep. However, what's important to me now is to know that he will have felt the force of my love, and that my words of love for him are not spoken to another without first being spoken to him.

Eulogies are a beautiful tradition but to my mind they are always said too late.