I couldn’t believe it or accept it.  Although I had been there when Sharon died I just couldn’t take it in.  It couldn’t be true.  I went through the motions, letting people know that she had died, helping to make arrangements for the funeral, getting the last few weeks of term off work. There were so many cards of sympathy, so many flowers and messages of good wishes and condolence, and gradually I answered them all.

I desperately wanted us all to remember Sharon, to keep her in our hearts, so I asked people to contribute photos and their own special memories of Sharon to go in Memory books that we would be able to keep and look at later.

In August it would have been Sharon’s thirty fifth birthday. We had a party to celebrate her life – Sharon loved parties! We put her photos on the walls. We played her favourite songs. People who hadn’t been able to come to the funeral came to the party. We looked at the Memory books and shared memories – sad times, happy times, funny times – and we talked about Sharon.

People worked so hard to make it a success, especially Sue Herbert, who did all the food, and Tracey Knapp, who organised the raffle and managed to persuade half of Didcot to donate prizes!  We were raising money for Cancer Relief and for Sobell House.  There was music and food and dancing.  People had a good time.  Near the end I think I stood up and said a few words, thanking people for coming and just reminding them that we were celebrating Sharon’s life.  We raised lots of money, much more than Sharon had raised.  It was an achievement and a tribute to Sharon that people had wanted to raise so much money in her memory.

The trouble was that Sharon wasn’t there to see it, so after it was over it didn’t seem to matter very much.  Nothing mattered really.  For me it felt that all I was doing was just passing the time, distracting myself by doing things, just getting through the days.

I went back to school in September. Everyone I worked with was very sweet but they mostly didn’t talk about Sharon.  Sometimes people would sympathise and say, “ I know what it’s like. It was so awful when I lost my dad.”

I wanted to scream.  “No one knows what it’s like. And this is my daughter that I’ve lost.  It’s not the same!”

But what was the point? They were only trying to understand, just being sympathetic.

The worst things were not being able to talk to her, to see her, to hold her.  She wasn’t there to say, “It’s OK, Mum.”  I felt so guilty that I hadn’t been able to keep her alive.  I had been there when she was dying and I should have helped her. I should have saved her.  I knew in my mind that she had wanted to be out of all the pain and discomfort, that it was time for her to die.  But it still kept going through my mind that I could have done more, I should have done more.

I phoned up the nurses who had been with Sharon and me when she died.  They were very good and talked to me about it.  They assured me that there was nothing that any of us could have done, that she had had “a beautiful death.”  They were helpful and kind.  I should have felt better for talking to them.  I did, but the guilt was still there.  I felt guilty for being alive and doing all those normal things that we take for granted.  Poor Sharon was no longer alive, no longer able to see and hear, to talk, to dance.  It was all wrong.  It was so unfair.

Our special times were the worst: Sharon’s birthday, their wedding anniversary, Christmas.  At Christmas and birthdays Sharon and I had always gone shopping together so we could get the right sort of presents for each other.  We had gone out for meals to celebrate, and sometimes for walks, just to get together and talk.  We hadn’t spent Christmas Day together because Sharon and M liked their traditional Christmas meal and Nik and I are vegetarians, but we had always phoned up and greeted each other. But now she wasn’t there to text or phone or e-mail.  She wasn’t there.

Mother’s Day was a day that I already found hard because I was still missing my mother.  May had died in October 1998, six years before.  I missed choosing a card for her, phoning her up to say I’d remembered, having a laugh with her on the phone.  But she wasn’t there to tell her how sad I was, missing her, missing Dad, missing Sharon.

It all seemed to start so early in the shops.  Christmas started in October and no sooner was Christmas over than it was Valentine’s Day, which was Sharon and M’s wedding anniversary.  After Valentine’s Day then the Mother’s Day cards were in the shops.  All those sweet little gifts: “Just for you, mum”.  I treasure the doll with ‘Super Mum’ on the tee shirt, and the soft squidgy bear holding a heart that reads ‘World’s BEST mum’.

Unbearable. Heartbreaking.  So I just didn’t look at all those displays.  But sometimes things just caught my eye or they played a tune on the radio and I was in tears again.  The scary thing about starting to cry was that I felt that if I started crying I would never be able to stop.  There was just so much grief inside that I felt I would cry forever. It felt as if it would be uncontrollable, so I had to make sure that I didn’t start.  I just kept it for walks on my own, or I got up in the middle of the night, or I played the music loud when there was no one else there.  No good crying when there are people there, they won’t know what to say.

At work I kept busy, busy, busy. No problem keeping busy when you’re a primary school teacher. But I began to feel that I was being put under a lot of pressure at work. There didn’t seem to be much understanding of my situation or sympathy or support. Just pressure to come up to standards and provide evidence of children’s progress and produce plans upon plans upon plans.  I couldn’t fight it. I didn’t have the energy to fight. But I worked hard and put up with all the humiliation. I felt that I was being pushed out, but I didn’t want to go. I loved the job. I loved the kids. I’d been doing the job at that school for 30 years.  I didn’t want to leave under a cloud. Surely if I worked hard enough I could prove my ability and my competence.

But in March I realised that however hard I tried, whether I was all singing, all dancing and juggling with six balls at once, it still wouldn’t be good enough.  I went for early retirement “for the efficiency of the service.”  It felt like another bereavement.