it has been a hard day but a good night… there were tears throughout…

friends and colleagues have been emailing and sending prayers and thoughts, which is wonderful, but also difficult…

although the anniversary of George’s death is tomorrow, it was on a Monday evening that he died…  my BS friends were at my house when the police came…

the officers drove me and one of my friends to the hospital advising that it appeared that George had suffered a heart attack and had been taken by ambulance to the hospital…  they didn’t know anything further…

the drive to the hospital was slow, which did make me wonder if they knew more than they were saying, and when we arrived the staff took us right through to the room where he was…  as soon as I walked into the room I knew that he was dead… they had intubated him and the tube wasn’t connected to anything…  I think the hospital people assumed the police had told me, but they hadn’t…

my friend stepped out and the doctor came to speak with me and advised that George had had a massive heart attack and they had done everything they could, but weren’t able to revive him…

then I had to call my daughters… thankfully the one here was home with her husband, so she had some support to receive such horrible news… my other daughter was home alone in BC, as her husband was across the country on a training course, and after we spoke she tried to find him but it took hours for her to be able to speak with him…  both calls were unbearable…

I remember everything from that evening and much from the following days…  I remember sending the email to those who needed to know… I remember way too much, and I forgot lots too…

we will commemorate this sad anniversary tomorrow night with dinner with all the kids…  the ones from away will be on Skype or Facetime so that we can be together…

I sit here with a piece of butter tart square (one of George’s favourites) and a little glass of Baileys after my BS buddies have gone home… the streets are deep with snow, but they came anyway and brought flowers and memories…

we talked about how George would often stand in the doorway to the living room to greet everyone before I would send him down to the basement so that we could have our time together… how when we had our dinner last week no one other than me could even mention him, but that everyone was thinking of him… how I had set the table so no one could sit in his place…

and the miracle that they were here with me when the police arrived…

we talked about the fact that a year has gone by but it also feels like just yesterday… and all the things that I have accomplished in that time…

I have grown tremendously in this past year, from necessity, but I remember my beloved every single day and all the special ways that he looked after me and those around me…

a year can go by in the blink of an eye…  remember to tell those around you how much you care…