Month: March 2026

This is 45

Photos of Emma’s birthdays from 2020 to 2025

And just like that, we’re at six years since Mr C was taken by ambulance to our local hospital. Six years since our daughter looked at me and asked, is Daddy going to be OK? Six years since life as we knew it spectacularly imploded. Six years since COVID-19 entered the lives of his family, friends, colleagues and all who knew him in a way that they’d never forget. Six years since I turned 39 years old. Which, of course, means that today I turn 45.

That in itself might not seem like a particularly big milestone. It’s not a “big” birthday. Except it’s a milestone that has been sitting with me for a while now. And one that hasn’t been sitting very well. Because 45 is the age my husband was when he died. 45 is the last birthday we ever celebrated with him. Being perfectly honest, I can’t even remember what we did on his birthday in 2019, his last birthday on earth. I’ve gone back and looked, and it was a Wednesday. Did we go out for dinner? Did he go to work? I had no way of knowing that I’d been wondering many years later. That I’d need to try to capture every moment of it because it would be his last.

It feels weird to be turning 45. I vividly remember being 15 and thinking that 30 was old. Anything older than that didn’t really cross my mind. I think when you’re that age, you have no real idea of the concept of being a grown up. How it lasts for a really, really long time (if you’re fortunate, that is). To now be able to say “I’m 45” makes me think I’m a proper grown up. Someone who really should have her life together. And shouldn’t still be trying to make sense of what the hell has happened to her since her 38th birthday. Her last one before the day was forever marred by a panic stricken 999 call in the early hours of that day.

In the run up to today I’ve been asked what I’d like for my birthday. I’ve been asked what I’m doing today to celebrate. It’s been the same every birthday since 2020. All the photos above show my birthday every year. The video call in 2020. My 40th in the garden with visitors (and carboard Jason Donovan) in 2021. A curry after a surreal day in 2022. Going to the office and treating myself to a coffee on the train in 2023. The belated trip to the West Coast of the USA in 2024. A cheeky visit to the Haribo store in 2025. I wonder what today’s photo will turn out to be of.

Generally speaking, most years (aside from 2024) and certainly this year, my answer to those two questions has typically been that I’d like to pretend it’s not happening. That I’m not doing anything. Today though, as luck would have it, I’m actually going to hospital for an appointment for my daughter. Taking after her father there with making sure a hospital is involved on my birthday. After all, that tradition started on my 20th birthday when Mr C had his first chemotherapy session!

And as I’ve said. This birthday simply hasn’t been sitting well with me. I’ve not enjoyed anyone turning 45 since he died. A fear of that age. I’ve almost breathed a sigh of relief when people have turned 46. I wonder if this is more of an issue for young widows, I certainly don’t remember my nan feeling this way when she became older than my grandad. Or if she did, she didn’t say it out loud to us.

Perhaps, it’s another one of those almost unexpected milestones in young widowhood and grief. People always talk about the year of firsts, about important birthdays, things that will happen in my daughter’s future such as learning to drive. But this quiet little milestone of reaching the same age as your late husband isn’t one that others have factored in. And why would they? It’s not something I’d have really thought about before I lived through this experience. Yet more than that. Every year when I turn older on my birthday, it’s a little reminder that my husband doesn’t get older anymore. That this day of me getting older is essentially the day that time stopped for him. Granted, he didn’t lose his life on this day, but he very nearly did. The early hours of this day marked the last time he was ever in our house. The last time he heard the words “I love you” from our daughter. The last time he was properly conscious and cognizant of those around him. It’s the most bittersweet pill to swallow that I should “celebrate” on this day. My daughter hasn’t been able to say the words “Happy Birthday” to me since 2019. She struggles with birthdays generally and mine is particularly tough for her. I can’t say I blame her.

I suspect today is also slightly more jarring for me this year because for the first time since 2020, all the pertinent dates related to my late husband falling ill and his death are falling on exactly the same day. My birthday was a Monday in 2020. It’s a Monday today. The pertinent dates falling on the same day over the last few weeks has been plain weird. I genuinely believe that the body keeps score and reminds us even if we don’t consciously think about it. I hit 16 March this year and it was like my body knew. I was ratty, tired, apathetic. Last Sunday, 22 March, the day he came down with his temperature was a weird one. I had no energy to be sociable. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was over it. I suspect I was also slightly on a comedown after a fun few weeks for the Jason Donovan Doin’ Fine Encore tour. But still, these reminders and dates were feeling hard.

So, in typical Emma fashion and to avoid me being swallowed up by the overthinking and melancholy that could accompany the year of being 45, I’ve decided to try to do something positive. Admittedly, there was a bit of overthinking that led to this when I sat and worked out when I would be older than Mr C ever got to be. I suddenly got it in my head that it would fall on my daughter’s birthday in January. It doesn’t but I was very close with my thinking, it’s four days before.

And what is that something positive? Between now and that day I’m going to try to live a little more deliberately. Because I know all too well that life is short and can change in a heartbeat. Tiny adventures. Brave moments. Things that make me laugh. Things that honour him. A whole variety of things. A collection of 46 moments and activities between today and the day I become older than my husband ever got to be.

I’m a marketer by background so of course I’ve had to come up with a name for this. And make a pretty little social media tile. The Time In Between felt particularly apt, because that’s what the next nine months are. The Time In Between reaching the same age as and then turning older than him. And I’ll be documenting them all on my social media platforms, because then I’ll have nice memories popping up each year during this time. That’s important to me. Making positive memories to balance out the more painful ones.

I’ve already got some ideas of what I’m going to do during this period of time. Some incredibly simple, some a little bit more adventurous. Because that’s the thing with life, isn’t it? It can be both simple and adventurous.

But if I’ve learnt anything over the last six years, it’s that life is made up of so much. And we never know quite when or why it’s going to change. Or when we’re going to run out of time to do that thing we’ve been putting off doing. To open the celebratory bubbly we’ve been saving for a special occasion. To pick up the phone and make a call to someone we’ve not spoken to in a while. To simply live our lives. Before it’s too late.

Six years ago today, time felt like my enemy. It felt like I’d not had enough time with him. That time had been stolen from me. For the next few weeks, I had no real concept of time. It was all just such a blur. Of going through the motions. Time still does feel like my enemy a bit. It feels like forever and no time at all since that fateful day. I guess that’s why I’m choosing to make the most of The Time In Between.

Because over the past six years, I’ve realised just how very precious life is. How short it really is. How it’s a privilege to grow older, despite all the issues that come with being a woman in her 40s. And most of all, just why it’s just so important to make the most of the hand that life deals you.

My daughter might not be able to say it, but I can. Happy Birthday to me. Here’s to whatever the next nine months and future has in store for me.

Day of Reflection 2026

Image of the Charlesworth Family and front cover of Is Daddy Gojng to be OK?

Today is the Department for Culture, Media and Sport COVID-19 Day of Reflection. It seems crazy to think that we are now six years on from when the pandemic first entered our world.

The Day of Reflection is an opportunity for the nation to reflect and come together to remember those that lost their lives and to honour the tireless work and acts of kindness shown by many during the pandemic.

To mark today, I’ve chosen to release an exclusive extract from my book, Is Daddy Going to be OK? on the WAY Widowed and Young website. It recalls a conversation I had the week before my late husband died. Under normal circumstances, it’s a conversation that would have happened face to face. It’s a stark reminder of how different the world was then and the difficult conversations both the NHS and those with loved ones in hospital had to have six years ago.

Today is a day for reflecting. For thinking about those we’ve lost and my thoughts are with everyone that is still living with the aftermath of the pandemic in whatever guise or has experience of what it was like to be bereaved during the pandemic and to be widowed young 💛

Becoming Emma Charlesworth, Author

Various images of Emma Charlesworth and her book Is Daddy Going to Be OK?

Today is World Book Day. And this one feels a little bit different. Because this is my first World Book Day as the author of Is Daddy Going to Be OK? Since I’ve been able to hold a book in my hands and say I wrote this.

For many years, I was one of those mums that came to dread World Book Day. It simply meant finding a costume for my daughter (my brilliant parrot umbrella for Mary Poppins was quite something). Books and reading were always something that I actively encouraged as she was growing up. Language and storytelling were something that I knew the importance of, but they belonged to others. Not me.

I didn’t grow up aspiring to write a book. I didn’t have plans to become an author. Writing was never something I pursued with any sense of ambition or expectation. I didn’t write. It just wasn’t something that I thought was good at. Every year at our annual performance review at work, I’d say that writing was a skill I needed to develop. I didn’t write in greetings cards, leaving that to my late husband. Yet here I am. An author. And the journey to get here has been a heck of a rollercoaster (no pun intended).

When I started writing my blog in 2021, I didn’t start it because I had a plan. I started it because my social media posts had become insanely long. Family and friends suggested a blog would be a good idea and may help others. It was a natural progression. When my husband fell ill in March 2020, I quickly took to social media to share our story and to get support. Because under the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, virtual support was all I could get. Sharing our story and writing became a lifeline for me. It helped me feel less isolated by knowing that there were people out there thinking of us. Willing my husband to get better. The social media posts I wrote four weeks later when he died, were some of the hardest posts I’d ever written. How do you share that your husband has died at the age of 45 of a virus that up until a few months previously no-one had ever heard of?

As the days turned into months, my writing helped me as I tried to adjust to our new world. As I learnt how to put one foot in front of the other as a young widow and solo parent. As I tried to make sense of the senseless. As I captured moments, thoughts and feelings that shone a light into the world of bereavement and grief. What I didn’t realise at the time was that writing wasn’t just helping me process what had happened. It was preserving it. It was creating something that would outlast those early days of grief and the immediate aftermath.

Over time, what I viewed as my little ramblings became something more than I had ever expected. People began to read them. To connect with my words. To see themselves in them. Messages would arrive from strangers who understood in ways that others couldn’t. From people who were also navigating loss, or who had followed our story during the pandemic and had never forgotten it.

People told me to write a book. I laughed it off. Where on earth would I find the time to do that? But more than that, writing a book felt too big. Too permanent. Too exposing. Writing a blog post felt safe. It existed in the moment. It reflected where I was at that point in time. But a book felt different. A book would become part of the record. Something that couldn’t be quietly edited or reshaped with the passage of time.

But slowly, writing a book, telling our story, the real story of the pandemic became something I wanted to do. I began to understand why it mattered to me so much. And I was “gently” encouraged to explore the art of the possible, after all, what did I have to lose? So, in March 2024, on the holiday my late husband and I had always planned to do my 40th birthday, I opened my emails and got the final push I needed to turn a hypothetical into a reality. And thus began the concerted effort to write my book.

I didn’t sit down and define an audience. The marketer in me would be quite cross at that. All I simply wanted to do was tell our story in my voice. I didn’t write the book in chronological order; I had to write as memories and thoughts came to me. Putting myself back into 2020 and 2021 was incredibly tough. I’d changed phones and lost all my messages from those early days, so I’d ask my sister “could you send me the group message from X date.” Invariably the response was “where are you? if you’re on the train or at work, don’t read this now.” My commutes became my writing time. Any spare moment tended to turn into writing time. I’d drop my daughter at dancing and then sit in a coffee shop writing. I’d write on the train as I travelled to weekends away. Writing become a second full time job. And I then had an epiphany about what to name each chapter. “To Charlie” was coming to life. The words I ended my speech with at his Memorial Service were the title of the book. It was happening.

But then I hit a wall. I procrastinated over finishing it. And it was only through my life coaching sessions with the wonderful Sheryl Findlay, that I was able to unlock why.

Subconsciously, it felt that this book was my final goodbye to my husband. Everything that had gone before was leading up to this. This book would tell the end of his story and the beginning of my new life as a young widow and a solo parent. To finish this book felt like saying goodbye to him for the last time.

Once I unlocked that, it made the final days of writing easier. It reminded me that his life hadn’t simply ended. His story and his legacy were continuing, just in a different way. It might have been my final goodbye as his wife, but it would mean that he would be immortalised in print forever more. A place in history. As I got ever closer to finishing it, it brought up so many emotions. My last words were written at Peckforton Castle, the place my nan lived when she was evacuated during the Second World War. I was nearby for a Widowed and Young event and it felt like the most apposite place to write. I hadn’t realised when I sat at Peckforton with a coffee just how close I was to finishing it. As I closed my laptop for the last time, the tears came. The tears continued for the whole of my drive home.

A short while later I found myself back in therapy again. I hadn’t prepared myself for what it would do to me by putting myself back in those early stages of grief, finishing the book and coming to a number of realisations about my life. The book which I’d dedicated so much time and effort to simply lived on my laptop. I had to put my mental health first. I had to focus on me and process everything I’d compartmentalised and buried for nearly five years. My brain allowed me to process it better. Time does that. I’d compartmentalised because it was just too damn painful to deal with at the time. Now I had to deal with it to help me move forward.

And then. After about six months or so, the want to do something with To Charlie returned. I contacted agents. At times it felt like I was pitching into an abyss. I had numerous conversations to get advice on publishing a book. And then in April 2025, Softwood Books was recommended to me… the rest is history.

I learnt so much working with the team. I still am. Their patience as I gave them a manuscript with the caveat that I didn’t think I liked the title of the book anymore. Because I felt that people would see it and think it was a letter to my late husband rather than being a toast to him. The noddy questions I asked about publishing a book and all that entailed. The noddy questions I’m still asking of the team! My deliberations and meticulous attention to detail. Is Daddy Going to Be OK? became the new title. The book cover incorporating yellow hearts as they became a symbol for all those lost to COIVD-19. My late husband’s handwriting as part of the logo for Twists of Hope Publishing. So much work in the run up to the release date of 14 November 2025. The day that would forever become the day I became a published author. The day that I knew World Book Day would take on a new meaning for me.

Yet Is Daddy Going to Be OK? isn’t just a book for me. This is my family’s story and a way of creating a legacy for my late husband and daughter. And in some small way, a legacy for everyone whose lives were affected by the pandemic. It was never about writing a book for the sake of it. It was about making sure that our story existed in a form that couldn’t be forgotten. From the day my husband died, I was adamant that he wouldn’t became a statistic of the pandemic. One of the numbers we heard every day on the news. Figures representing loss, but not the people behind them.

My late husband was, and always will be, so much more than that.

He was a father. A husband. A son. A brother. An uncle. A nephew. A cousin. A godfather. A friend. A colleague. He had a life that was full of meaning, humour, kindness and love. He had a future that should have stretched far beyond the age of 45. And our daughter deserves to have something she can hold onto. Something that tells the story not just of how he died, but of how he lived, and how she and I continued afterwards.

I am an author but I’m also still the same person who wrote those waffly social media posts and started a blog. I am still navigating grief in all its complexity. World Book Day this year also falls just a few days before the COVID-19 Day of Reflection, a day dedicated to remembering those who lost their lives during the pandemic and the millions of people whose lives were changed forever.

For many, the pandemic is something that feels increasingly distant. Something that belongs to the past. But for families like mine, its impact is ongoing. This World Book Day, I find myself reflecting not on the book itself, but on the journey that led to it. The unexpected path from survival to legacy.

But above all else, this book exists because my late husband existed. Because he was, and still is, loved. Because he is missed. I wrote a blog nearly three years ago, titled “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Telling his story is something I needed to do. Because it deserves to be told. Our story deserves to be told. He deserves to be remembered. Books and words have a way of outliving us. They’re a legacy. They carry pieces of people forward into the future. They help make sure that even in absence, there is still presence.

This World Book Day, that means everything.

Is Daddy Going to Be OK? is a memoir about grief, widowhood and resilience after losing my husband during the pandemic, and about helping a child navigate loss. The book is available from the below retailers: