This week it is three years since my wife died leaving our three young daughters and me dealing only with the despair left in her absence. Each year we have All Souls Day, Fireworks night and Remembrance Sunday but don't need any of them to remind us of the anniversary.

We have faced ups and many lows during this time and most of this time, I was too proud or stubborn to know how to ask for any help, or to show any fragility I was feeling, for fear or being split open. I wonder how much of the same our daughters have had to do.

The truth is that pain that is hidden deep on the inside is something unbearable, and when you stop for even a minute to take a good look at it, it can burn so profusely it just overwhelms you and you just have to find a way to let it out. After nearly  one and a half years of feeling like that, I took to writing and posting as an outlet for grief, but I had no exact intention of what I was hoping to achieve. I think I wanted a way to get things off my chest and in a way doing so helped me, the trouble is that grief has many sharp edges. When we experience unbearable loss just about any conversation about what you are going through is sure to cut you open. People know this and it is why so often they don't know what they can say, or find any words that can help you, when it is so obvious that each expression of comfort can inflict such obvious searing pain.  

Finding myself every day in this twisted conundrum, I found the written words helped me let some of the pain out, and even share it. I have proudly tried to prove I am strong and not often given people reason to suspect I cannot manage. I have managed and so have my daughters, and that in turn is thanks to the many supporting people around us in all walks of life who have offered help, donated money, given us endless praise and encouragement, and offered all that they can, but the thing I needed the most, was also the thing I knew if I let my guard down would just kill me; the longing for a hug and to be told that everything was going to be all right, and if I was feeling all of this, God only knows what my daughters needed.

We lost so much there, but the hospice was the last place where our daughters got a hug from their Grandfather and a hug and words telling them that things would be all right from their mother.

The things that we need most are also the things that can break us and so in the absence what could have made things any better, we give thanks to everyone for all their other ways of support.

I don't know if we will ever reach our target of £5000, but I know in our hearts, we have to keep on trying.

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