5 years on ..

The anniversary of Steve’s death motivates me to look back to see how far I’ve come since 2020 when he died. 44 years marriage meant we did so much together. We were blessed with was 49 years if we counted being friends in St John Ambulance.

When he died I decided not to to base my future feelings of happiness or contentment on the availability of the children nor anyone else. The security of knowing I have family and friends is vital and means so much but it comes comes from what I can give rather than what I receive at present.

I believe it as my duty to follow a healthy lifestyle to hopefully remain as fit and healthy for as long as possible. I’ve kept journals all my life so I know me! I know what motivates me, what upsets me and inspires me so while Steve was unwell I created a list of new hopes and dreams . After he died I wrote: “Keep Going like this…

Year 1 (Covid Year) - grieve properly and learn to shop cost efficiently. Ask Rik to teach me to cook hotel quality brightly coloured delicious meals for 1 and learn to speak Italian and swim.

Year 2 become financially astute, create and stick to my household budgets. Understand compound interest (boring) So create a travel list of places I want to go and sights I want to see and photograph. Continue to sing with the choir. I also got to sing at Abbey Road Studios and was in a couple of films 😍

Year 3 of being widowed my aim was to travel to a minimum of 10 different countries each year while I was fit to do so and create myself a photo travel memory book to see how far I travelled as a widow and look at when can’t do things or remember things anymore. I also climbed Ben Nevis and Snowdonia mountains.

and so on .. this method has kept me motivated over the last 5 years. I look forward with excitement, focus only on today and never mope about what might have been. The word IF is the most ridiculously ungrateful word.

If … I never met Steve my life would have been totally different. If I’d been born in Afghanistan my life would be totally different. If my mum had lived not died my life would have been totally different. So I never even consider using the word IF. So far in 5 years I have visited over 30 countries and travelled approx 57,400miles. The circumference of the earth is around 24,900 miles. No matter what happens now or in the future my confidence in myself has grown by realising I have circled the globe about 2.5 times alone and survived a week in arctic conditions of -23°. Its not in my diary to go yet as I’m hoping to live long enough to go to the moon dependant on NASA or the progress of Elon Musk establishing his self-sustaining city on Mars. SpaceX, has a contract with NASA 👏👏

That said faith is so strong, so if I pop my clogs tomorrow I done everything I want to do up until today. I’ve missed out on nothing. I know I’ll be back with Steve one day . I’ll find and exhaust him again. I’ll tell him about his legacy of such a talented family. Michelle working at Silverstone Rally School doing what she loves , Rikki doing whatever he does with military . Joshua the carpenter, Alex now has a book published , Harvey working hard at GSA to become a Theatre Director and Tommy is already a Football coach working for Oxford United. Meanwhile I continue enjoying and learning from my solo adventures and disasters.