Sandra, the woman I loved, has died.  She is no longer here and, however hard I try, I do not feel we will ever be together again.  She was terminally ill for some time and I had the privilege of being her carer, looking after her as she faded away before me.  I was at her bedside for those final days, here in our home, as she went slowly away from the world we had both enjoyed, away from me, away from our family and, ultimately away from life itself.  The family and I were there when her pulse failed and she went with a quiet sigh and a squeeze of my hand.  The woman that I had loved; and lived with; and laughed with; and cried with; and had four children with; and had seen, with her, our six grandchildren arrive and begin their own independent lives. 

However, only I will see any future grandchildren or the future family Christmases and birthdays, the graduations, perhaps the weddings and even the great-grandchildren.   And I will do that all on my own ..., yet I can hardly face the idea without my Sandra.  I miss her so.  Cancer cannot be my fault, I know.  Yet I feel I let her down because I could not stop it and all the efforts I may have put in to care for her over the years could not stop the disease that devoured her body but not her spirit.

Yes, I know.  I know that I have to get used to the fact that we only had that time together and not a second of it is left or can be repeated.  All that really holds it and makes it real is my memories.  The photographs are just shadowy images of another time and another place and other people, the people we were, and not the real Sandra I loved above everything.

I knew that I would miss her when she went ... but I could not imagine how much I would miss her.  It is almost unbearable.  I do not know what to do with myself.  I want her so much to be here and with me but she cannot be.  But can we be somewhere together again?

Could death just be one step on the eternal pathway of the human soul? An eternal spirit forms the basis of some religious beliefs but it does not seem to be logical.

Life for human beings is at best counted in a few score years and since the beginning of time there have been billions and billions of human beings on this planet. If their eternal existence began with a very short spell here on earth, then that means there must be billions and billions of souls continuing life into eternity.  Life on earth for each of us may be just a few years but eternity is … well, eternity!

Where would all these souls be and why?  Could my Sandra be lost amongst all those strangers ... when I dream and hope she would want to be with me?

Almost all religions suggest that some people are saved or rescued or enjoy eternal bliss - so that must be just a small proportion of those billions and billions of people who have died.  Religious leaders tell us that the others are condemned, doomed and will spend the rest of eternity in hell or limbo; yet many of these may be completely innocent. What happens to the billions and billions of souls of those who died before they were old enough to make any conscious decisions for themselves on how they should behave?

Most of us feel confused, disorientated or overwhelmed when we consider the infinity of space; perhaps the human mind cannot cope with the concept of either eternity or infinity.   Mine certainly cannot.

All around us, the reality of our own lives is bounded by finite dimensions, edges or boundaries. Our home, our garden, our school, our university, our place of work, our village, town, city and our country. And indeed, the world itself is relatively small with a circumference of a mere 24,000 miles; this means that the furthest anyone can go away from any point on the surface of our globe is a mere 12,000 miles.  Compare that to the distances that are involved when we look up at the stars.

There are millions of galaxies in the universe with billions of stars, many of which will be zillions of light years away. And remember that a light year is composed 31,536,000 seconds - and in every single one of those seconds, light would have travelled 186,282 miles or the equivalent of nearly eight times round the world. Such concepts are simply beyond comprehension.

This incomprehensibility may be, for some, a reason to believe in God, religion and a bigger purpose or – equally, for others, something completely opposite in that the whole crazy universe seems to be totally random, a biological, geological and chemical accident.

However, one thing that all of us of sound mind have in common is that we know we are all going to leave our physical bodies and this planet at some point.

My wonderful Sandra had been seriously ill following the confirmation of an incurable condition at an age which would seem to me to be long before the normal life span we might all hope for and expect on this mortal coil.

So, these words are the longest, least satisfactory and most insincere apology I have ever made: that apology is for the fact that in the last three months since she went (and for some considerable time before that), this blog has not been as regular or frequent as it should have been. As you will understand, my focus of attention has been on supporting my wife, caring for her, taking her to hospital, dealing with the medics, trying to be supportive and offering her all the practical care that I can manage. She really needed very little of this from me as she was strong and brave and her personality and love of all those around her helped right up to the end.  She left us, never complaining and never feeling sorry for herself. 

I drafted this note, originally in the present tense, in May 2009, four months before she died.  But before now, Friday 18 December, with the dread of a Christmas coming soon without her, I have not had the strength to even read those words that I have now re-edited into the past tense, three months after her death.  In that original draft, I said.....

When the time comes, whether we will both ever meet again I have no idea but that is the adventure we have both have yet to find out …

At this point, something unexpected happened. I tend to draft the copy for this blog onto one of those little mini digital voice recorders. Sometimes I do this when I am out walking our two dogs. At the time of putting down the first thoughts of this copy, I was walking across the beautiful and peaceful Norfolk countryside, with the dogs happily playing around. I was brought back into the conscious world by some barking and our two dogs shot off and, in the distance across the flatness of the fields, I could see a couple walking their two dogs ... and the inevitable happened. The four dogs met and, as is usual, they all began playing together. However, as strange dogs meeting strange dogs can sometimes end up in a confrontation, I called my dogs back and, untypically, they came immediately. I put them on their leads and turned round to go off in a different direction.

It became so clear to me then.  She is going, sooner or later, but who knows when? What do I care about a blog and all those silly-arse business things?  My blog is far more trivial than anything as significant as the life my wife and I have enjoyed and hopefully I alone will continue to enjoy for sometime. Can I ever get used to the idea that when she goes, she will not br here and never will again? Will I ever be able to think about her after that without tears?

And the incident of those two dogs and the distant strangers that brought me back to a harsh reality ...  did this produce an aberration, a glitch in my brain, malfunction in my intelligence, symptoms of early Alzheimer's, premonitions of a divine intervention or was it just an accident of time and place, a coincidence? Whichever, I think I will leave it there…

Sandra Haywood, born Sandra Yenson, lover, wife, sister, mother, grandmother, celebrated painter and sublime human, 16 February 1943 to 23 September 2009, fell in love with Roger Haywood, June 1960 and married him on 30 June 1962, making him the most fortunate man in the world.