Today, had things gone to plan, I would be celebrating my husband’s sixtieth birthday with him. When I say ‘plan’, I mean ours, not the eternal one. And it has, at times, been a bitter pill to swallow that this isn’t a mistake, or an aberration of some kind – this is precisely what was meant to be. Donnie was meant to die five months short of his fifty-second birthday, and I was meant to be a widow at thirty nine.
I accepted this because, well, I accept the sovereignty of God. And, most of the time, I accepted his wisdom and his goodness. Yet, I am human and sometimes it was hard not to dwell on what I had lost, and on what Donnie would miss out on by dying so young. One of the hardest things was a school photo of his that surfaced on social media, shortly after he died – seeing him as a cute, wee boy with all his life ahead of him . . . it was almost unbearably poignant.
I used to comfort myself with the idea that the grief would get easier, which it does, mostly. What I didn’t know was that it would still wash over me in waves that sometimes feel, even now, like they might utterly engulf. It made a friend laugh recently when I told her that, after he died, I used to wish it was five years in the future so that things would be easier, better . . .
That would be 2020, then, year of Covid. I think Donnie himself would laugh at my unfortunate wishful timing.
On what would have been his sixtieth birthday, therefore, I simply want to pay tribute to a quietly wonderful man. He would never have allowed it had he been here, but there’s no one to stop me singing his praises now.
He proposed to me while wearing a Santa suit – fittingly, as being his wife was without doubt the greatest gift he could have given me. The proposal was cemented initially with a locket he’d bought me because he’d lost his nerve in Ernest Jones after going in to buy a ring. ‘I don’t know what an engagement ring looks like’, he said, as though the whole thing would have been a thorough mystery to the jeweller as well.
Usually he didn’t balk at buying me presents other men might consider embarrassing. I think the ring was different because it symbolised something so important. Donnie understood what mattered, and to him, at thirty nine, this was a big step. The day we went to the manse to discuss the service he was nearly delirious with nerves. Somehow, I think he had it in his head that the minister would catechise him or something. These nerves carried on right up to the big day itself, when only a stern ‘don’t you dare’ from his big sister stopped him from being sick!
It’s funny to think back on how he reacted to these small pressures because, when the ultimate test of his mettle came, we all saw the man he was, and none more than me. He faced his initial diagnosis matter-of-factly, endured treatment with stoicism, and looked upon the end of his life with total reconciliation. If he shed a tear he never did so in my presence, and all his worries were for me – would I be financially secure, would I be taken care of. When I told him that I would be alright, that I would not give way to despair, he seemed surprised at the very idea that I might.
His faith, you see, was far ahead of mine. He was only concerned with practical things, things that he could do for me – things he felt he SHOULD do for me, even at the end. The rest, well, he knew he was leaving that in safe hands.
How often I have imagined his wry comments and mischievous smile over the last eight years. He would have had much to say about world events and local politics. A mild-mannered fellow most of the time, he would have erupted into protective fury at some of the situations I have found myself in – but, then, most of these wouldn’t have happened in the first place had he been here. From almost the first moment we were together he made me feel safe, cared for, and like the most precious object in the world. I was first in everything, the apple of his eye.
Of the few regrets I harbour, one is the fact that many special people who have come into my life since then never knew him. He would have loved them as I do, I’m sure. In moments of weakness, I regret that he will never again insist on running me a bath, or pouring me a glass of wine because I’ve had a hard day. Donnie was the sort of man who filled my life with small kindnesses – flowers from the supermarket, my favourite chocolate, compliments and, though I can scarcely remember why, frequent expressions of gratitude.
Known in his own family as ‘Dòmhnall Beag’, and sometimes just ‘Beag’, I never knew a man of greater moral stature. He genuinely never put anyone ahead of himself, and his first instinct in every time of trouble was to ask what he could do. His bravery, for a man of any size, was titanic.
After he died, I read the diary he’d been keeping in his last months. It was entirely filled with reflections of gratitude and love, just as his life had been. He broke me with this entry, however: ‘I hope Catriona meets someone who will be good to her. She deserved so much more than this’.
The thing is, a Dhòmhnaill, you set the bar impossibly high; I don’t believe there could be more than we had. And though there are days I wish God’s plan had aligned a little more closely with ours, I can hardly be surprised at his haste to bring you home.
Whenever I’m cast down by the way his plan unfolded, or am tempted to question providence, I look at all he has given me, and it is well, it is well with my soul.
Post tenebras lux 