Its tough but you gotta get on with it

So what a month July has been. Work has been difficult as my work colleague lost her grandma who she was very close to and obviously is very upset. I am not much help to her and i know she must find it hard to talk to me about it which is difficult for me as i would love to help her. I have started having migraines again which are being brought on by stress, along with palpitations, dizziness and tiredness. The doctors think its just stress but i am undergoing tests just to be sure - the difficulty is that i can't really tell anyone other than my best friend because i don't want to worry my mum and dad or the kids. It's just another time that i realise how much i miss talking to Stewart. I realise that that offload time when we both came in from work and talked about our days, however mundane was a real stress reliever and without it i am really struggling. I have had a difficult week with the bank starting to hassle me over increasing my payments (that they set at a low rate) to them to pay back the unsecured business loan stew took out, but i was joint signatory. They are threatening to get a charge on the house and I don't know whether just to let them do it, or whether they are allowed to do it. Looks like i will be taking some advice on that but its another worry i just don't need.

However i have had two lovely things happen to me over the last 7 days.

The first is i visited my friend who happens to also be a medium. I went for a hearing and boy did Stewart come through. He couldn't stop chatting and she hit on so many things that she couldn't possible have known. Things about both stew and I that are impossible to know that it is frightening. She even told me that i had a friend who was heavily linked to barry manilow - that will be Fi who is a regular there and one of Stews favourite people - and the last person to be with him and me before he died. How strange was that. There were funny moments, touching moments, and heartwarming moments and I think I have gained a little comfort from knowing he is around even if I can't get to talk and touch him. What I wouldn't give for a cuddle off him right now, and a kiss on the top of my head that he always gave me when he walked by. I realise how much I miss him, it isn't getting easier but I know that i will learn to walk alongside the pain, there isn't any way other than that even though there have been times in the last few weeks that I could have curled up into a ball and given up. My kids are my life savers. However bad i feel, I look at them and know i can't give up for their sakes. They are so like their dad. Each of them has a little bit (in some cases a lot) of him in them. Jamie speaks like him and has his sense of humour and knows exactly where he was coming from. Alex is inquisitive and loves cooking just like him and gemma, well poor kid, she is the image of him and every time i look at her Stewart looks back. How can I give up on them?

The other amazing thing to happen is that the charity walk we are arranging in memory of stew to raise money for the hospice he was in has gone live. It is official. The Stewart Rudette Anniversary Walk for men will be held on October 18th 2009, 1 year and 1 day after he died. The link for the walk is http://www.st-gemma.co.uk/forthcoming/stewartr09.htm - the wording is beautiful and i have even been allowed to add a message from us to those taking place. I would love 100 men to take part, more would be better and i would love to raise £5000, the cost of the care given to Stewart whilst he was in. It was a bittersweet moment but I know that by keeping his memory alive and raising money for a wonderful cause will give us the strength to carry on.

The next few months are going to test us all. We have the consecration of the headstone in September along with the Jewish New Year. It will be hard to be there on the first day as that was the last time Stew went out in public. Last year he was so determined to be in the synagogue for even a short while that I picked him up from the hospice and took him in a wheelchair. We only lasted an hour but I am so pleased to have had the memory of him, Jamie, Alex and my dad sat together one last time. We then face the jewish anniversary of his death (we have a seperate calendar as we go on the lunar calendar as opposed to the english calendar which is by the sun) followed by the anniversary of his death. To help us through that, we have booked a holiday between those two dates in the hope that although we have to get through those days, some sunshine and relaxation in between will bring a little light relief. We are going with my best friend, her husband and kids and although her youngest and gemma don't know we are actually going together yet (they will drive us mad if they did) we are looking forward to it.

I hope that this year will be over and things will start to brighten for us. I know the pain won't go but I also know that once the year is up we have to start living again. Stewart wouldn't want us to be down forever and we must start to look to the future. We will remember him every day, we will miss him every minute of every day but we must make sure we don't waste the lives we have - he wouldn't want that - he believed in living life to the full and in his memory I am going to ensure that the kids live their lives and their dreams and carry on the dream he had for them - to be happy, to be healthy and to have fun - life is too short to waste.