To Charlie

And so, we hit another one of those milestone dates. 20 years since I became a Charlesworth. I’d not really thought about the fact I’m always going to have ‘big’ milestones in the same year before today. Getting married in 2005 and Mr C dying in 2020 means I’m forever going to have anniversaries with five and zero in them in the same year.

It seems insane to me that our wedding was 20 years ago today. I’ve been joking at work that I was a child bride. But I wasn’t. I was 24. Which admittedly does seem incredibly young now. Especially when I consider my daughter will be that age in nine years. I can’t see her getting married then.

Yet I didn’t necessarily feel that young when we got married. We’d been apart while I was at university for the three months before I dropped out. We’d already lived through my late husband’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. We’d split up for a few months. We’d bought a house. We’d been together for six years (bar the three months split). We’d faced things that some couples never face. And let’s not forget, while I was 24, my late husband was 31. A far more respectable age to get married.

I’ve been thinking back to that day a lot recently. Looking back at all the photos. Wondering where the heck my tiny waist went. Wondering how so many people who were there that day are no longer with us or a part of my life. Wondering how I ended up being widowed before I even hit my 15^th wedding anniversary.

Because that’s the thing isn’t it? When you’re stood at the front of the church and say the words “till death do us part,” you don’t actually think it will happen before you’re old and grey. So given the amount of grey hair I’ve acquired since 2020, now would be a far more apt time for this to happen. But putting levity aside for a second, I simply didn’t expect my marriage to be over in the eyes of the law by the time I was 39. Mr C, however, always told me that he’d never be an old man so maybe he did have a sixth sense that this might happen. Maybe this is why he lived life to the full so much and put his heart and soul into everything. Because he knew that his time on earth wouldn’t be as long as most of us expect it to be. I wish I could ask him.

There’s a lot I wish I could ask him to be honest. I’m collating a list for that day when I can finally go through it with him. He might want to go into hiding when the inevitable happens for me! But this one of the things I’ve struggled with the most since he died. Not having that person to ask when you’re doubting yourself. That person to sanity check things with. That person who is by your side and loves you through the good times and the bad. I’ve said before that I’d never been an adult without him having begun our relationship just before my 18^th birthday party, and it really did feel like this when he died. How the hell was I meant to do this adulting malarkey by myself?

If I’m honest, I still don’t really know how I’m doing it. Except I’m not really doing it by myself am I? I have a wealth of support around me and in that respect, I’m incredibly lucky. The love and support that have been afforded to me and our daughter is something he would be incredibly thankful for. I think he’d have been just as surprised as me at the people who have been there for us and the people who are no longer part of our lives, but I’ve learnt that’s just a part of this grief process. You lose people along the way. They don’t know how to respond to you so it’s easier to just back off. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy making sense of this, but the simple fact is this. I’m not the same person I was at the start of March 2020. Mrs Emma Charlesworth suddenly stopped filling in forms as “married” and had to start ticking “widowed.” How could she possibly stay the same? When something as fundamental as this happens to you, it changes you. You can’t be who you were before. You have been broken and damaged in a way that barely anyone could ever comprehend. It happened to a certain extent to Mr C when he fought cancer, it changed him. He’d been through something life changing and it made him reassess a lot.

But the wealth of support that my daughter and I have was evident at CharlieFest: Dress to Impress last weekend. The fundraising event I held to mark our 20^th wedding anniversary. There was so much love in the room for Mr C as well as for my daughter and me. I knew that. The moment I stood behind the microphone and did a speech, I looked out at my family and our friends and could see it. It was particularly special to me that both our best man and matron of honour were there. The friend who did a reading at the wedding. The friend who sang at the wedding. I might not have had my husband there, but I did have people there who were an integral part of that day on 10^th September 2005. That meant a heck of a lot.

I recently wrote about how this event felt more personal to me than the previous ones I’d run. It wasn’t just celebrating him; it was celebrating our marriage. And I think fittingly, it probably represented all aspects of our marriage. In the run up to it, I felt broken and teary. I felt that I was letting him down. These were emotions I’d felt at times throughout our marriage too, because of all the pressure I put on myself. Because of the real life getting in the way. There was no idyllic, happily ever after marriage for us. We had to work at it. As so many people do. There were times we both felt like giving up. Again, I felt like that in the run up to the event, I felt like giving up and cancelling it. But I didn’t. I’d love to say it was dogged determination, but the truth is, I didn’t cancel it because of our daughter. She kept faith that it would be a good event and became my glamorous assistant at getting everything done.

One of the aspects I struggled with the most was the numbers, again slightly reminiscent of our wedding when we had to chase for RSVPs! But when my daughter and I had this conversation for the umpteenth time recently, she simply said “What matters is that it’s the right people. You don’t need lots of people to have fun, just the right people who want to be there.” Saturday night proved she was right. The right people were there, and a lot of fun was had. There were nods to him throughout the entire evening, we had stars from CBeebies and our local pantomime there (which he would have loved!), his influence was felt in the music that was played, and it was simply everything it needed to be. We’ve raised money again for the Intensive Care Unit who did so much for him in the last three weeks of his life. It’s a heck of a legacy he’s left.

And as I sit here now and reflect on this anniversary, it’s very bizarre for me. Overnight I went from being one half of Mr and Mrs Charlesworth to simply being Mrs Charlesworth. Trust me. Going to his cousin’s wedding and hearing lots of people toast Mr and Mrs Charlesworth in 2022 stung a bit. Hadn’t mentally prepared myself for that one. But now I don’t really think of myself as Mrs Charlesworth. I’m Emma Charlesworth. I’m a Charlesworth and despite everything that has happened, I’m proud to be one. My daughter is a Charlesworth. Today will always be the anniversary of the day that I became a Charlesworth and started a new chapter in my life. I will always fondly look back on the opening of the anniversary pig (all the small change coins we’d saved over the year) and seeing what we’d accumulated to pay for an anniversary celebration. I will always think about our 10^th wedding anniversary when the boy did good and whisked me away to Brighton to a room with rose petals on the bed and a sauna in the room. I will always remember our fourth wedding anniversary when we had our 20-week scan of our daughter. We always celebrated this day. I will always continue to remember and mark it.

But today, as is often the case with grief and time moving forwards, I haven’t made a big thing of it. Today I’ve worked. I’ve done the school runs. I’ve done the dancing runs. I’ve dropped off some Vinted parcels. My daughter and I grabbed a spot of fast food. She then treated me to a McFlurry. It’s incredibly different to the day I should have had today. I know the boy would have done good again and booked something for us.

It’s why I wanted to do something good on Saturday. It was my turn to mark the turning of another decade since 10^th September 2005. The love I still have for our marriage and for him. The love I have for all those chapters of my story that we wrote together.

And as I made my speech, thanked Mr C for everything he gave to me and the friends I now have because of him, I knew I was going to raise a toast. But this wasn’t going to be a toast to Emma and Charlie as it should have been for a gathering to mark a 20^th wedding anniversary. No, the toast I raised was “To Charlie.” No-one in the room realised the significance of those words when then said them. They will shortly though. And it’s why I said them again this evening. I poured myself a gin in the Dartington Crystal gin glasses I treated myself to five years ago to mark our 15^th, and my first, anniversary without him. I raised two toasts. One to Mr and Mrs Charlesworth to celebrate our marriage. The other, a repeat of those two words, because without it, I’m not convinced I’d have had the strength to keep going without him. Ironic really. Throughout our relationship, I doubt either of us really realised that somehow, he was helping me to prepare and learn to do the one thing that would have felt incomprehensible. To survive, live and thrive without him. I’ll be eternally grateful and love Mr Charlesworth for that. No two ways about it.

After all this time? Always.