I’ve always been fascinated with language. The ability to capture an emotion, mood, nuance or feeling in a song, story or poem seems to me to be the greatest thing. I’m also always astonished when I find a word in another language that doesn’t have an English equivalent. How does that happen?

This is the 3^rd Anniversary of Gail’s passing and I’ve done what I’ve done for every other significant day and that is to get away and try to do something different. This year sees me in Portmeirion, a place I’ve wanted to visit since I watched the TV series ‘The Prisoner’ as a boy, more years ago than I’d like to recount.

I know some people see what I do as ‘making new memories’ but it doesn’t seem like that to me. I have to do something with the day; I can’t ignore it or work through it some way, and it just seems better to be able to associate it with something I’ve always wanted to do. Three years away and even during COVID I can look back and recount where I’ve been on each successive anniversary – be it wedding, birthday, ‘D’ (No word for the day of death?) or Funeral day – and that seems a worthwhile thing. Like Hong Kong in 2019 and Egypt in 2020 I feel as if she’d have approved at me trying to do things, and in a way I feel closer to her if I can do and see things for her. Wrapped up in that though is a curious consequence.

Although I don’t remember it ever being discussed, let alone dismissed as a bad idea, the fact is coming to Portmeirion with Gail would have been extremely difficult. Due to her Lupus her mobility was always impaired and although she successfully got around Ephesus as relatively recently as 2010, Portmeirion would have been far too much. Coming to these places then means I’m doing things I wouldn’t have done had she been here and it’s too easy to see that as, if not a exactly a positive, then certainly a light in the darkness, a sense I’m – please no! – ‘moving on’. I try not to look at it like that.

For me there’s not one single aspect of my life that is better without Gail in it. However, the fact is I’ve done things, seen things, met people that I wouldn’t have done had she still been alive. All those things I’ve done and everyone I’ve met have been positive experiences – even when they might not have seemed it later on – and I’m happy and grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to do them while wishing with all my heart that it had never been necessary.

Because I posted some photos of Portmeirion on social media, I got a lot of support and positivity from people – many of whom I have never met. In amongst the wishes was the inevitable ‘It gets easier’ or ‘Time is a great healer’. I used to wonder about that three years ago. What exactly was going to happen when that time came and how would I recognise it? Would I have days where I simply wouldn’t think about Gail and what would fill that void instead?

What I’ve discovered after three years is that no-one has the language to adequately describe what actually happens. People generally are trying to help but, like those who tell me I will ‘see her again’ – something that rankles with me as it surmises a belief that shouldn’t be assumed – telling me it gets easier is just a collection of words designed to console.

To confuse matters, some who tell me it gets easier have occasionally experienced the same loss but are just a year or two or three further down the line; suggesting their is some end point I’ve not yet reached. However, that thought was expunged when, on one occasion, I discovered one consoler actually lost their partner more recently than me, but just assumed my loss must be more recent because of the pain I was describing. Did that person then actually feel better than me? Had they discovered some biblical-style grace that meant they felt the loss less keenly?

So let’s put this thing into some type of context. It doesn’t get easier, time isn’t a great healer, but what happens is it gets different. It isn’t more fun, you don’t relish the freedom, it’s not better to have an Anniversary meal on your own, you don’t think how lucky you are that you’ve now got the opportunity to visit this place you’d not have seen, you don’t count all the new relationships you’ve made.

What you do is the only thing left to you – you just get on with it and hope you find some nice times and thoughts to go with the ones you already had and lost.

So, a word for that please?