“Death taught me what really matters in a relationship”
On her last night on earth, my wife Sandra made many declarations. They were full of wisdom – some touchingly hilarious, some blunt and maybe hard to swallow, others juicy and divine.
It was a crowded night. She'd called a number of people to her bedside. I hated crowds. She knew this and kept her eyes on me, still checking I was OK right up to the bitter end.
At one point, amid all the chatter, she put her hand to her chest, looked at me with those big blue eyes and said: "I am air, you are water. You are the creative life force that always flows through us. You were right about everything, it just took me till I was here to realise it."
Imminent death can give you these glorious, dramatic movie moments, muddled in with endless horrific hours and scenes that would never make the final cut.
A big love
Many people have spoken beautifully about how ours was a big love. They're right. We were two big women, two big creative life forces, two big energies, two big irreverent hearts... that much is true.
We were able to co-create magic – make big things happen. We often wished we had met earlier and had children together, created more projects – but you have to be ready for someone like that.
Sandra often said life is perfectly timed. It feels hard to believe that now when her death feels so untimely, so unfair. The thing is, air and water operate in very different ways. We both knew what we liked and how we needed our lives to be. Those things often looked very different to each other. We came with experience and a list of things we wouldn't put up with or compromise on.
Far from perfect
Sandra loved crowds of people. I needed to be alone. Sandra liked symmetry and I liked random things, slightly off-centre. Sandra was always absolutely freezing, I needed all the windows open and couldn't breathe with the heating on. While I was naked in hot tubs in winter, Sandra was dressed in a balaclava and 27 layers.
Sandra needed a logical plan that followed sequences and clear steps worked through one at a time. I rely on instinct to dance a creative vision alive from the end backwards. All this could sound like one of those cute 'opposites attract' stories, but the stark truth is it was really hard work at times, and it was far from perfect.
There were arguments, storming about and out, slamming doors, eye rolling, sulking, diva flouncing and hurtful words, either muttered by Sandra or exclaimed loudly by me. I led with the heart, while Sandra needed to analyse everything through her brilliant mind. I annoyed Sandra greatly and often and she me. We drove each other mad sometimes.
Scars and demons
I arrived with big scars from relationships that had been violent, taken me to the edge and left me untrusting. Sandra always wanted me to say that I trusted her. It would have meant the world to her. For a long time, the most I could give was "I love you and I now trust myself deeply." She didn't like that at all, but it was my truth. Sandra came with her own demons, as we all do. Her narrative was more like, 'I love and trust you deeply, but I don't always love myself'.
Before Sandra, I was always running away too soon from good stuff or staying too long in damaging places. When we met, she said: "I'm not like the others. I've got staying power. I'm never leaving you." That frightened the hell out of me. I spent way too much time in the early days working out if my watery soul could be around that kind of solidity.
At the end of her life, it broke Sandra to leave me. I knew she was suffering so much because, as more than one of the consultants and nurses declared, over and over, in a most unmedical fashion: "She doesn't want to let go of you and your life together – it's keeping her here, despite the odds."
Witnessing the trauma
Terminal cancer is a cruel, uncaring bastard. There's no sugar coating it. It took away gigantic pieces of someone I loved with all my soul, piece by piece, and all I could do was witness the trauma.
Loving Sandra during her three years of trauma meant our two great life forces laid down many of our differences, much of my stubborn, protective, steadfast defences surrendered and dissolved into something that I can only describe as the deepest love I have known.
I just let myself love Sandra exactly as she was. I let go of having to fight for things to be my way. I compromised and didn't need to be right anymore. I metaphorically closed the window to keep her warm and I don't regret a moment. It's something I could maybe never have done without the circumstances. It taught me that I can love beyond what I thought possible.
Letting go
Sandra, for whom surrender of control was the ultimate scary act, let go of so much and gave a new meaning to the word 'trust'. She trusted me to do the right thing, she trusted me with her medical care, with decisions which she was too vulnerable to make, with her life and her broken body and her words and her legacy.
In the end I both loved her and deeply trusted her and kept on trusting myself. In the end, I let that big love right in and let it break me open. I could say I trusted love would carry me through the nightmare, but it's more accurate to say we really had no choice than to keep on going.
In a way, she was right all along, just as she realised I was, too.
Sandra was a poet . She left these words:
"We are all the one soul really
bound in love to journeys end
no matter the time it takes
It is being together
Getting there
That is life's work."
You can read more of Clare's writing about Sandra on her blog .
