Chapter 26
26
TOM
I remember when Lou and I got married like it was yesterday, but there have been more than three thousand five hundred days since then. That sounds like a hell of a lot, but it turns out that it’s not enough. Not even close to it. The run up to the wedding was hectic, as these things often are, and when I broke my leg at the stag weekend, playing football in the garden of a pub of all things, it felt like a disaster. This was it, I’d ruined the wedding. My suit that had been agonised over for so long, would be accessorised with a boot cast and crutches, and there was no way of tying the colour of the cast into the sage green theme. I thought Lou was going to go mad when I told her, but she laughed. Actually laughed. Not a derisive snort of laughter, but a proper laugh, the kind where it takes a while to actually get any words out.
‘Great, because that’s our three things. All the bad luck being used up before the wedding must be a good thing.’ She’d given me a rueful grin when she’d finally managed to speak. Our florist had already gone bankrupt, but far worse than that had been the loss of one of the earrings her grandmother had left her, which she’d been planning to wear on the day we got married. So the prospect of me having a cast in all the photos didn’t faze her one little bit.
I realised then that she didn’t care about things that didn’t matter, when it came to our wedding. She wasn’t marrying me for the perfect day, she was marrying me because she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but I loved her even more in that moment than I had before, and I didn’t have one shred of doubt that I wanted to spend my life with her. I haven’t regretted it for one day and even if I’d known that the time we’d have together was going to be cut so short and end so painfully, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
I’m supposed to be writing some words for the wedding vow renewal and I want to say all of those things, but I don’t want to make this about the fact that Lou is dying, I want to make it about the life we’ve lived together, and how grateful I am that Lou chose me of all people to share her life with. I’m terrified every day that this might be the one where Lou leaves us. She’s getting more and more unwell, and the cocktail of medication she’s on could restock the village pharmacy. There are nurses coming in and out, and we’ve put a bed down in the lounge so that Lou doesn’t have to try and make it up the stairs.
The cancer has progressed so much more quickly than we expected and, as much as I can’t bear the thought of losing her, part of me wonders whether the fact that Lou won’t have to continue to suffer is one of the small mercies that Holly and I have tried to cling on to, in the face of losing the woman we both love most in the world. I couldn’t have got through this without Holly; it’s something I’ve thought about a lot during this whole nightmare. We’ve both been scared that Lou won’t get the party she so desperately wants, and we’ve had to accept that it’s not going to look how she originally planned. But Holly has worked so hard to make sure that, as long as Lou is still here and still wants to go ahead, she’ll get to celebrate our anniversary, a milestone birthday and her final ‘Christmas’ in a meaningful way. Holly has met with the staff at St Joseph’s, and the Plan B to hold the party there has quickly become our Plan A. We’re just two days away now and as I take Lou’s hand while she sleeps, I silently will her to hold on.
She’s sleeping so much of the time now, but when Holly brings the children home from school in about an hour’s time, Lou will use every ounce of energy she has to appear as normal as possible, and to make sure she soaks in every detail they’re willing to share about the day they’ve spent without her. I try not to think about just how many more thousands of days of their childhood they’ll have to spend without the best mother they could ever have asked for. If I let myself go there, I’m not sure there’ll be any coming back.