This page is dedicated to my lovely husband, who died in June 2003 at the age of 50 leaving me, his 23 year old daughter and our two young sons. We had been married for 15 years.

My husband, whom I called "James" in my stories, was a big exuberant man, kind to the bone. He was witty, he was charming, he was deeply uxorious, he was the pivot of my life. He was one of those easy, tactile men — a man's man, but all my women friends loved him. He had so many friends. More than 200 people came to his funeral.

James worked in the music business from 18 (when he ran away with the circus to work for Hawkwind) until he chucked it in for a dull job to fit round family life. He toured with big names, went round the world five times and did the whole "with the band" rock thing until we fell in love.

In 1997 I started my own little company which was incredibly demanding but made enough to keep us all. I couldn't go on doing this and looking after the domestic stuff so we swapped roles. Some men would have found this hard to handle, but not James. He was always my greatest fan and so at ease with his masculinity.

Of course this turned out to be a more important decision than either of us realised at the time. His new role meant his sons saw far more of their Dad than most kids do, and now it means they have many memories of a man who was always there.

The images on this page show how he gloried in his children. How we gloried in each other is described in stories like "Ripe", "Mild-mannered Clark Kent" and "A Bigger Man."

My father-in-law and my brother-in-law on my husband's side both died of cancer. In 1998 I even wrote a story, “Well-Known Sayings", about his brother's illness.

James was diagnosed with cancer on 1st July 2002 — the day after our younger son was seven.

There was little hope from the start. His tumour was massive and inoperable. I was told to expect no more than six months. We resolved to make the most of every day, and he did. I never saw anything so heroic. He was so ill and yet so loving he almost glowed.

As it was, we got nearly a year; and he slipped quietly away of a side effect before he ever reached what they call the terminal phase. What he had endured already was more than enough.

We were so lucky. He dreaded being parted from the kids, incontinence, all that — but in the end he lost consciousness in his own chair. In the week before his death he was well enough to drive the kids to school and even to do a spot of shopping for a neighbour. She was so embarrassed afterwards: "I made a dying man buy me milk!", but he'd have liked it that way. He was always chivalrous. Young women I know say they won't marry until they meet one like him.

As I sat in my kitchen in the days after his death a jug of red roses he'd picked for me from the garden was still sitting on the table.

I wish I could have hung on to my first reaction to his death. I felt sheer gratitude and almost a joy that he was finally free. But in the time that's followed I've begun to realise what we've lost. It's hard work both emotionally & practically being a lone mother and running a company. But it's worse for the kids.

You can have more than one husband, but you only get one father. And it's desperately hard for them — even his adult daughter — to come to terms with losing Daddy. They cry at night sometimes, even 18 months on. The little one says, "God has ruined my life."

But we did have *so* much. No relationship is perfect, but our marriage was fun, it was sexy, it was full of laughter and I can only be very grateful for all the happiness we shared.

Love is the only thing of lasting value in this life.

© BronwenSM, 2004-2009. Click here for copyright/legal info.