The Story…

On the 4th January 2015, the love of my life died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack.

Mark will always be love of my life. I cannot even begin to describe him as a person and how much joy and wonder he brought into my life.

I have tried writing how our love felt. I have tried to pour the overwhelming perfection of two people who fit so well together into words and I find I cannot. I am reminded of the book ‘Guess how much I love you’… Marky used to say he loved me to Gallifrey and back. It was the kind of love that made you feel in harmony and at peace. True love changes you. You learn to love differently, to think differently… to give in a way that is selfless because all you want in the world is for your partner to be happy. I walked around in the world in my own little impenetrable bubble of happiness. I am not sure how he did it but he managed to make every day feel magical. It was the most love, the most happiness, and most fun I could ever imagine having. I cannot even imagine having that much in common with another human being again. We used to practically shout “SAME BRAINS!” at each other for how much we thought alike. It was with Marky that I came to know what love was supposed to feel like… warm, close, secure, nurturing, happy and magical and adventurous all at the same time.  I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams I could have been lucky enough to meet someone so fun, so magical, so geeky, so weird, so intelligent, so hyper in the mornings and so well connected to me. His life was taken only three hours since we kissed last. He was far too young. We had our whole lives to live yet. He was 39, myself 26.

We met through the group to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah to number one in 2008. Pretty soon we had the oddest in-jokes and he was sending me huge boxes of quavers and wotsits from Amazon… but I won’t tell the joke behind it! I sent him dinosaurs and a duck teapot. Our friendship evolved till we were spending day and night messaging each other, having not even met in person yet. When we finally met we were inseparable from that day.

He sneakily let on in November that he knew how he was going to propose. He joked that we were “engaged to be engaged to be engaged” because he would ask me so many times during morning cuddles if I would spend the rest of my life with him. We talked about our wedding a lot… it would have been in the forest. There would have been a TARDIS somewhere hidden in the woods for people to discover. Chandeliers would have hung from the trees, tents would have sprung up with carnival type treats for people to enjoy. We were both neither conservative nor traditional and our wedding would have reflected the magic that was true love.

We planned so much because we knew we were for eternity. We knew our first daughters name. We were going to paint our children’s bedrooms like the universe and teach them about science and the wondrous nature of the universe.

In our time together we had so many adventures. We travelled to Paris, Edinburgh, London and Cardiff… and we had so much fun… so many gigs, so many hotel parties giggling like idiots, fancy hotel rooms and awful hotel rooms… he got the whole of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club to sing along to Fairy Tale of New York. He was that amazing. I was always so in love with how passionately he would talk about music. The gigs we shared together were the best of my life. We were always at the front, getting shoved and bruised in the crowd and clinging to each other and kissing when our favourite songs were played. It felt like us against the world and it felt so alive. We did long distance (Marky in Wales, myself in London) so we went over the top on our adventures. However when he moved to a new home in Wales he would call it “ours”… if I ever called it his, he would correct me… and he moved all of heaven and earth to make me feel like it was ours. It was my weekend home. I did not need anything other than him… just me and him, our little part of the universe which was my part time home at The Shire… our shared youtube playlists and dancing. I would usually arrive at The Shire a few hours before he finished work and he would leave me lush post-it notes all over the apartment to welcome me home. Marky said it was our own little part of the universe.

I wanted my whole life to be with him. I felt I could face anything if he was beside me.

I want to shout from rooftops how amazing Marky was. I want to tell the world of his ridiculous jokes, his creative ways with words, his soulfulness, his intelligence and fiercely political nature, his humour and eccentricities, how utterly completely weird he could be, how hyper he was in the mornings, his stories of imaginary made up animals, his intense passion for music, how beautiful his intense geekiness was, how I could listen to his musings on our favourite shared geek (Doctor Who) for hours. I want to tell you that this amazing human being existed… the kindest person you could imagine, the most giving and sweetest. I want the world to know that someone this beautiful and majestic existed. My best friend was all of this and so much more. Nothing I could ever say about him could be big or bright enough for someone so beautiful.

You start to realise how little language conveys with this experience… ‘I miss him’ says so little. The ache of missing him turns into physical pain and language does not convey the measure of that ache in my soul to be able to speak to him and touch his face and hear his voice and I miss him alone says utterly nothing. I miss him so much that my bones ache and I feel like I cannot walk and the sheer horror of never being able to speak to him feels as if someone punched me and then I feel numb and I feel trapped in human constraints and I just need him. I love him to Gallifrey and back and I will never stop.

There is no name for this pain. I cannot describe it. Language betrays me when I attempt to form the words to share it. It feels both overwhelming and hollow like the world stopped being a good place. I can’t put this pain into anything. There’s no song to scream it into or film that depicts it or book that understands it.

It is a nameless pain.

Writing has been my only solace… which is why this blog has been born. I have found myself writing a lot in the months since my love was taken and I feel a need to organise them here. I have found it comforting to read others words and know I am not alone in all these terrifying feelings. If you’ve just lost someone, you are not alone, and these overwhelming emotions are normal. I promise.