A yellow roses day

As I make my way through my first year of being a widow, there are a lot of 'today I should have'. Tim and I were my life version 2.1 and we spent a lot of time going to motor races together, particularly classic motor races. There were to be four major race meetings this year, and sadly we didn't get to any of them.

Tim was buried on the first day of the Goodwood Members Meeting, wearing his Bentley Drivers' Club tie, and with his entrance badge in his lapel and his programme voucher in his pocket. I couldn't face Le Mans 24 or Le Mans Classic, and yesterday should have been our first day at Goodwood Revival.

Instead, in life version 3, I had planned to run the Great North Run, and today I should have been heading up to Newcastle with my friends Sue and Pete. However, a bout of viral gastroenteritis, and perhaps my body telling me to have a break, put paid to that.

So, because of all this it's been a tough week. And on top of it all the dreams have been difficult. One where I was wandering through a house full of people and I couldn't stop crying. And another where Tim came back and told me it was a mistake, and when I woke up I turned to see if he was there.

This morning, when I went to the doorstep to pick up the milk that Sue had dropped off before she left, I found a bunch of glorious yellow roses. Yellow roses are important to me. The day my dad asked my mum to marry him, he picked a yellow rose off a bush and gave it to her, and somewhere I have that rose. Dad would buy mum yellow roses on their anniversary, and Tim would buy me yellow roses to make me smile. Mum, Dad and Tim were all remembered by yellow roses.

So, though I am sad, and my heart is definitely elsewhere today, I do have yellow roses by my side.

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