“Would you love me if I walked like this?”

M

As someone who needs something to worry about, my current fear is that I might forget Him.

OK, not Him, but the little things He used to do.

One buried memory came to me in my sleepless state last night. Sometimes I would wake to find Him propped up on His elbow, asleep, swaying to and fro like one of those wooden pecking bird toys. So enthusiastic was the swaying, that occasionally His nose would nudge into my back. (Yes, you sniggering at the back, it WAS His nose.)

Another bed-based memory is of Him sleeping, perfectly straight, in a diagonal across the mattress, bisecting it into two equal-sized triangles, leaving just a tiny corner for me to curl up into.

I found the empty wrapper of a Breathe-Right strip at the back of a drawer and it reminded me of how I used to hold His nose during the night to stop Him snoring.

Sometimes when He walked in front of my daughter and me He’d lift His knees up one by one and say, ‘Would you love me if I walked like this?’

Photos hold static memories, or memories surrounding a moment in time. But the camera cannot capture the essence of the person, the precious M minutiae which made Him, and our relationship, unique.