Being Mrs C

Today marks 16 years since I officially became a Charlesworth. Since I officially became Mrs C. But I won’t be celebrating with my husband tonight. Because today also marks the second wedding anniversary I’ll have spent as a widow. I don’t know how this is possible. Time seems to be going incredibly fast since Mr C died. It’s hard to believe in just over a month he’ll have been dead for 18 months. I’ll have been without him for the first time in my adult life for 18 months. I’ll be at the two-year mark before I know it.

But my wedding anniversary also gives me the opportunity to look back on my marriage and my time as Mrs C. Many people have said how much love comes through my writing and my other blogs, and while this is true, I don’t want to give the false impression that our relationship and marriage was plain sailing. Put simply, it wasn’t. Friends will tell you how they could always tell if Mr C and I had been arguing in advance of going out or seeing them. Tense. Frosty. Just some of the terms used to describe us! But this was who we were. It was par for the course. Because while our relationship may not have been perfect, it was real. We took the good with the bad. The rough with the smooth. Because we’d got used to life being like this. We’d gone through a hell of a lot before we even got married.

You see, Mr C’s first chemotherapy session was on my 20^th birthday. Just shy of our second anniversary of being a couple (what can I say? I’d needed a date for my 18^th birthday party!) I was ill equipped to deal with this. I didn’t really know how to cope with having a boyfriend who had been diagnosed with cancer, because I didn’t really know myself then and how to ask for help. It’s why 15 months after he got the all clear, we split up. It sounds like the biggest cliché in the world but during my time as Charlie’s girlfriend and his illness, I’d lost who I was, I felt like I needed to find me again. Little did I know that this loss of identity would come back again almost 20 years later after his death. I think this is a whole other blog in itself. Trying to maintain your identity after being widowed is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things in the world.

But back to our story. At the end of 2002, we split up. It was my decision. It hurt him. I ended up hurting him even more during our time apart. I didn’t mean to or even want to; I was just trying to find Emma again. And ultimately my actions resulted in us getting back together and giving it another try. Why? Because we realised we wanted to be together and needed to work through things as a couple, not as two individuals.

Fast forward a year and he proposed. It wasn’t a fancy proposal, but it was everything I’d wanted from one. And when I said yes, he told me that he had a date in mind. 10 September 2005. Yes, that’s right. There was no Bridezilla here, Mr C chose our wedding date. Three years earlier when he’d received the all clear, he did so on 11 September. The 11 September. The day the world changed forever. But for him, it was the day he felt he got his life back. And so, when he was thinking about proposing he thought about dates. He wanted our first day of waking up as Mr and Mrs Charlesworth to be on the anniversary of the day he got his life back. So, it was set. 10 September 2005 was our wedding day. I never imagined that when we uttered the words “Til death do us part” this would happen just over 14 years later.

And while I’d love for our wedding to have been the happy ever after and start of a blissful life that you hear some people talk about, it wasn’t. We had to work hard at our marriage. Having two stubborn people in a relationship, both of whom must always be right is going to lead to clashes! There were times we both came incredibly close to giving up. I think our daughter was three or four years old when he packed his bags and almost left. When I was particularly struggling with my mental health, I almost walked out. But we always worked through it. We were good at that. Working through our problems. We had plenty to contend with which put a strain on our marriage from both sides, but we worked through it. Because we were Mr and Mrs C. We were a partnership.

I look back now at what it was like being Mrs C. I felt secure. I felt settled. I was part of a team. I was independent but always knew there was someone there who had my back. I was loved unconditionally. I mean, on occasion there was tough love, but it was always done to get the best out of me. I was part of a parenting partnership. Mr C would do the drop off of our daughter in the mornings, I would be there to do pick-up in the evening, either on my own or with him. I didn’t cook, I did the washing and ironing. I would come up with elaborate ideas of how to decorate cakes and cookies involving edible eyes for Easter, Fireworks and Christmas parties, he would be the one to research how we could do them. I would watch him capture special moments by taking the photos, I rarely held a camera. I’d give him cards to write because I always said he had a better way with words than me. I didn’t do the food shopping alone; we would always do it together while our daughter was at dance lessons. It took me over a year after he fell ill to walk back into a supermarket for the first time. I couldn’t bear the thought of doing it on my own. And the first time I did walk in one I cried, much to the embarrassment of our daughter! There’s so much more to my life as Mrs C, but it feels a lifetime ago. And while part of me will always be her, I know deep down inside that she doesn’t really exist anymore. She can’t. Not without Mr C.

Life is hard without him in it. Both of my bereavement counsellors have asked me what I miss most about him. The answer is simple: him. I just miss him. There isn’t one thing I can single out. I miss all of the above. I miss his laugh. I miss his voice. I miss watching him be a father. I miss his sarcasm. I miss him rolling his eyes. I miss him telling me about the latest board game on KickStarter. I miss being part of Family Charlesworth. I miss his advice. I miss him being my thought of reason. I miss his company. I miss him being here. Ricky Gervais summed it up perfectly in After Life (please don’t watch this if you’re easily offended!) when he said “I don’t miss doing things with Lisa, I miss doing nothing with Lisa. Just sitting there knowing she was there.” And it’s exactly that. Because that’s the crux of a relationship and marriage. During the good times and the bad, you know that there is someone there for you. Always. 16 years ago I thought I’d have a lifetime of having that person. I miss him every single day, but days like today hurt that little bit more. Because while I’m so grateful for the time we did have, it somehow feels ridiculously short. And all the petty arguments and stubbornness now feel like a complete waste of time.

Because without question, what saddens me most about his death is that we’ve lost our future together. When he died, our relationship was the strongest it had ever been. We really were in a good place. I remember going to one of his gigs a year or so before he fell ill and watching him sing the Feeder song “Buck Rogers.” There are two lines in the chorus “I think we’re gonna make it. I think we’re gonna save it.” I can remember looking at him with pride and feeling these lyrics were about us and our relationship. I never told him that. But I just felt that despite everything we’d been through that we really were going to make it. We were going to be ok. Life had thrown a lot at us, but we’d got through it all. We’d survived it. And I guess in a funny sort of way we did make it. Neither one of us gave up on our marriage. We kept going.

‘Til death did us part.