[a certain sadness]

I have lived with a difficult guilt for many years; I’m writing to you both about that time when you were two and three and your father was at home dying of cancer. I think I failed you – perhaps one more than the other – in that I could not talk about him, and I now see this has given you a degree of suffering. I suppose I’m looking for understanding and perhaps forgiveness.

The years with your father were – at that time – my happiest ever and when you girls were born life was perfect. Then suddenly it came to an abrupt end.

Aged 30, I understood the finality of death, although for years I could not bear it and was consumed by a selfish grief. As small children, you could not know of this finality and so my prime task, while your father was at home with us, became to help you with his permanent absence. From Easter to June of 1970 I kept a log on the natural world around us, recording the wildlife we saw each day as we walked along our country lane to the bus stop – noting especially any signs of death. One day we saw a worm had been flattened by a car tyre, which, unlike the worms in the wormery at play group, I pointed out, no longer wriggled – as in the nursery song you liked to sing. We even saw how it gradually became dust on the road until one day it had vanished.

At night we drew these things in the notebook and talked about them and by June found that these things now applied to your father, and just as we had buried some creatures, so we now stood over your father’s grave.

You won’t remember any of this.

It was a gloriously sunny summer and family and friends visited throughout; you enjoyed their company, one happy day following another, mostly at the beach, until the last of your older cousins had to leave and return home for the new school year. One September morning, we stood together on the pavement and waved them goodbye; the car drew away and we were suddenly alone for the first time in nearly three months. As they faded from sight, you, S, immediately said, as if to the world, “Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” Your words cut into me like a knife. It was hard to believe, in that you were just four and had voiced what was uppermost in my mind too: such a void.

I barely coped with my loss and lost all sight of yours. I couldn’t talk about your father or mention his name. It was easier that way for me – but not for you, especially you, N, for you had no memories at all, while your sister had one or two.

It was when you were in your 20s and a relative was visiting and spoke casually of some trait of your father’s, that you, N, accusingly said that I had never told you anything about him. Your wound was visible. I had let you down.

Unfortunately, things could not have been any different; grief and loss had eaten into me so much that four years after he died I was hospitalised when the pain reached the surface. For those four years people would say to me: “It’s good you have the children.”

This may have been true, but it didn’t feel like it at the time; you were too young for me to share my inner feelings with. My appearance of coping, while not doing so, took too many years out of your lives. I always thought we’d come through, but I begin to think that for one of you, this may not be the case.

Evidently you are in some kind of turmoil, which troubles me. I can’t help but feel that the roots of this lie deep in the loss of your father and never having known him. With you as toddlers, I dwelt on the physical finality of death – it seemed the most important thing at the time – while, perhaps more importantly, I neglected to bring to you your father who lived and who loved you beyond measure. If there could be even a partial remedy all these years on, by us talking, then I would love to try, though even today it would give rise to many tearful hours. But I’m more than willing.

Anonymous

[a certain sadness]

I have heard it said that men cheat because they can. In case you don’t get it, it’s because there’s always some woman available to take up the offer or to offer themselves before the man even makes a move. Which category do you fall into? Did you see my husband in his depressed state, in the midst of a midlife crisis looking around and restless, and decide you would fit perfectly? Do you have so little respect for yourself, your mother, your sister, your friends and the sisterhood that you had no qualms about having sex with someone you knew was married and had been married for more than 20 years with children around the same age as you?

What would make you do that? Was it a challenge? The thrill of the chase? Did you stop to think how you would feel if this was your father running around? How your mother would feel?

Maybe he approached you. Or maybe it just happened in the course of work, of being friendly, and the attraction grew, but you still knew he wasn’t free; he wasn’t available. You have stolen the time, energy, attention and protection of my husband.

What have I ever done to you that would make you think it’s OK to know me and yet have sex with my husband? Was I unpleasant to you, or do you have such little regard for a fellow human being that you gave no thought to the harm you were doing me? You give women a bad name; make us look weak and desperate, and make men feel they can do anything with us and to us. Divide and conquer: women won’t stick together so the men win. Win the right to sleep around, to tell you lies and keep you on the side with their wives.

Why would you lower yourself like that? He told you he loved you? He told me he loved me for 20-odd years. He kissed you? He’s been kissing me for ever, and up to yesterday. He told you he needed you? Well, he hasn’t told me that in a while, but he started out that way, every day for years.

So what happens when he doesn’t need you any more? Do you understand that if it wasn’t you, it would be someone else? It isn’t love. Even if our marriage were the most dysfunctional, it still doesn’t give you the right to step into the midst of it.

You should not be a part of our story, and for your own sense of self you should see that. You should have your own story. You should value yourself enough to want someone who is free because, make no mistake, even if my husband leaves me for you, he’s not free. I’m wrapped in his head, his mind, his thoughts and his spirit. I’ll always be a part of him, even if it’s a part he is trying to forget.

So what is it that makes you disloyal to your own kind? Why have you chosen to become the worst sort of woman there is … the other woman? How can you lie on my sheets surrounded by my perfume? How can you sleep with him, knowing he’s sleeping with me? Men couldn’t cheat if there was no one to cheat with. His wife

[a certain sadness]

@pepsi wrote:

Has someone being reading The People’s Friend ? :(

Honestly … A certain … This can’t all be about you ? Can it ? :shock:

No pepsi my life is too boring for it to be about me, they are just letters from real people.

Lol@Peoples friend

[a certain sadness]

Evening all :wink:

[a certain sadness]

Ah, a new name welcome beatike :)

[a certain sadness]

have wanted to write you this letter for quite some time, P, but somehow wasn’t quite ready to express my thoughts and feelings until now. Not since you last wrote to me over 10 years ago, that is. It’s all about the memories that keep coming to mind, which I wanted to share with you. So here goes!

When I think back to the “Memories of happier times” card you pinned on the huge bouquet of flowers you sent me for my birthday in 1995 – the year we broke up – I remember how I felt when opened the card and read the poignant words you had written. I could not stop myself from crying as I sat on the stairs with the bouquet strewn in my arms. I felt gutted! Fortunately, both the boys were at school. How I longed for a hug from them at that most unexpected moment.

What were you thinking? “No chance of reconciliation,” you said before you left. Were you in your right mind? Wasn’t there enough pain for us to suffer? Did you still care at that point?

It was after that moment that I started to pull myself together, take hold of my life and become much stronger. Because, yes, P, our 19 years of marriage was coloured with many bright and wonderful moments: the launch of the Apollo rocket was particularly poignant for us both, as I am sure you will recall. Nine months after lift-off our first son, A, was born! Another glowing memory was the creation of our “Menorca” baby, our second darling son, P, in just as exciting and exuberant a moment of marital bliss.

Are these some of the memories that bring pictures to life in your mind too, as they do for me? Do you also remember, that summer’s morning in June 1976, as we were ready to make our marriage vows? Did you feel as hopeful and full of expectation as I did, looking forward to a lifetime together?

I am writing to you, P, not to look back to ask why and what really went wrong for us, because that doesn’t do any good. No, the fates decided our time was up and our relationship was over. You were destined to go south … well, quite a bit further south, really. Life in South Africa still OK, is it?

This is to just touch base, to ask if you are still keeping well. Still growing flowers for export, making home brew as you once did? Did the woman you left me for turn out to be the woman of your dreams? I remember when I met her outside The Castle Pub she reminded me a little bit of your mother. I got on very well with your mum, as you know.

You don’t have to answer these questions. The fates were certainly very kind to me, though it didn’t feel like it at the time. If it hadn’t have been for such an abrupt ending then there would not have been this amazing new me still punching at life. I might just have ended up being a boring old lady in a track suit, playing Derby and Joan with you (G** forbid!) rather than emerging as this phoenix force I am today.

Funny, P, how life turns things around most unexpectedly, isn’t it? I wonder if your new missus has evolved into the woman I was then, “track-suit-woman”? Because (you might like to know) I have become the woman in the power-suit with the smart briefcase – just like the woman you left me for I believe! How ironic, my ex-darling.

You might like to know that my life continues to change each day for the better. So, bon voyage, I wish you well. Love, V

[a certain sadness]

Tell me who admires and loves you, and i will tell you who you are.

[a certain sadness]

I spent most of the evening opening my sacks of mail but it was a good day.

By the way the Esso flowers went down a treat.

[a certain sadness]

:shock: :lol:

[a certain sadness]

1977 :oops:

Elvis died and erm… i cant remember anything else it was that long ago.

[Author]

Posts