I used to joke with Peter, my husband, that he would be the one to die younger than me. “How are you so sure?”, he’d say. “Oh, just a hunch”. Peter and I liked to make light of serious topics and death was no different. However, this death we were referring to existed in a faraway place, where we were both old and grey and our children grown up. When the guards knocked on my door that Saturday afternoon of the 24th September 2022, with a nightmare story of his sudden death, I felt the cruel, sick twist of fate. How dare you laugh at me.

Dying suddenly at forty, while out for a leisurely jog on a glorious Autumn day, was something neither of us had anticipated. Dying without being able to say goodbye to each other, brutal. In fact, I don’t think we ever truly believed either of us was going to die, because isn’t that part of the human condition? We were too busy living. We were in the middle of our lives, managing two small children, our jobs and our new home.

As my world started to cave in and I realised my husband had been wrenched there and then from our lives, I could hear myself screaming. Raw, intense, shrill screams that I scarcely remember, but later learned spooked all the horses in a field half a kilometer away. I felt that I now understood the ritual of keening, an old Irish tradition of vocal crying and wailing at funerals. I imagine I would have fitted in very well at one of those wakes back in the day, quite the natural in fact.

The rest of that weekend is a blur now. People were coming and going, sympathies were expressed, various mutterings of a tragedy. My two children were there, being looked after by others. Everything was choreographed effortlessly in the background, but the symphony in my head had become loud and raucous. An intensity that made it so, I couldn’t see or hear my own children. They, like everyone and everything else, had completely faded into the background.

There was a piercing silence on the Monday morning and my three year old son, Max, came back into view. I knew the time had come to deliver the news of his father’s death. Max is no dummy and he knew something was up. He had been spared the intensity and immediacy of my grief on that Saturday afternoon – luckily he had fallen asleep at that time. Armed with advice from Dr Google, I scooped him up onto my knee and said gently, “something sad has happened to Daddy”. Silence.

“Daddy’s body is broken and he can’t eat or sleep anymore”. Oh no, I had meant to say “stopped working!” Max paused, hopped off my lap and picked up his wooden lorry. “But Daddy said he would fix my lorry”. Crap. “And Daddy will fix his body too”. I persevered. “Daddy can’t fix his body, Max, because Daddy is dead”. Max’s hands shot up to his head. For a brief moment, it seemed like my son actually understood the horror of it all. He returned to playing with his toys just moments later.

Daddy’s sudden departure to “heaven” was something I chose not to share with my son. As far I am concerned, at three years of age, Max’s understanding of big concepts is very limited.  So to tell him Daddy was skipping around somewhere above the clouds, in my opinion, would have utterly baffled him.  What concerned me was Max might have hoped Peter would come back, or worse yet, that Peter didn’t care enough about him to come back.

Peter would have also murdered me for using the “h word” with his sons. If I were to describe my husband in one word, it would have been dogmatic! He had such a sweet, gentle side to him but he also possessed an unwavering certainty about life’s bigger questions. The existence of heaven was a definite no for him, and from a young age, Peter had refused to go to church.

“My Daddy is dead”, I’ve heard Max repeat several times to different people since then. My son possesses a newfound ability to make grown people squirm at the drop of a hat. I wish I could tell Peter what his son is doing in his absence – I know he would just laugh out loud. I desperately miss that laughter we shared with each other about our children and their daily interactions with the world.

Peter adored his boys and was completely devoted to his children. Whenever he was away, he would call me after about an hour, looking for an update on them. I knew that deep-down, most of the time, he missed them and just wanted to be home with us. And whenever I was away, he would head out with the two boys. They’d have lunch together, go for walks, you name it. All the while he’d be feeding me photos and videos of their little adventures together.

Remote working became Peter’s way of life from 2019. He had created his own office at home with gigantic monitors for remote work and a library of Terry Pratchett books. I was never allowed enter this room with a hoover despite my best efforts. He normally listened to pumping music on his headphones while working, but prior to the headphones, it sounded like a mini-rave was happening behind those doors. Max used to refer to it as “Daddy’s disco”.

I am very grateful for the time Peter got back through remote working. He got to spend a lot of extra time with us as a family. This was especially true during lockdown. How delighted Max and I were when his office door would swing open for his lunch break! He’d come out like clockwork every day at 1pm, still wearing his headphones, as he was finishing a work call. We’d wait with baited breath for his call to end and joyously exclaim, “Daddy!”, once it was over.

It is difficult to distinguish one lockdown from another when I think back. One thing I know for certain is we both actually really enjoyed lockdown life together, even if that seems strange to admit. We had just moved to a beautiful home amidst breathtaking scenery, and we felt very safe there. Peter never feared Covid really anyway, it was all “ridiculous hype” to him. And apart from the grinding repetition of each day, we generally loved being in our little bubble.

Our second son, Hugo, was a lockdown baby. By that stage we were fully-fledged lockdowners. Peter had his sourdough breadmaking down to a tee. Sometimes he’d run through the kitchen, having forgotten it in the oven, but despite these occasional lapses, had become quite the breadmaker! Meanwhile, I enjoyed taking the boys up the fields for some fresh air. Peter would sometimes surprise us and hop over the fence and join us, to shrieks of excitement from the boys.

One of our favourite things to do was dance around the kitchen with the boys. We would lift our little dance partners, Hugo with Mummy and Max with Daddy. Max would say, “play the fire engine song”, and we would translate, “Alexa, play Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson”. I used to watch Peter in those moments and remember our dancing days fondly. We both shared a love of music and dancing, and I would be transported right back to that moment we first met in Whelan’s nightclub in Dublin.

Sometimes I look at my children and I am overcome by an intense and fleeting sense that I can reach my husband. No sooner has it passed and my heart refills with the pain of loss once more. I do find some comfort, however, from knowing that he is in them. When Max becomes visibly shy or frustrated, I remember Peter saying to me, “I can’t help it, I wear my heart on my sleeve”. And when Hugo pauses and looks at me searchingly, I see Peter’s big blue eyes staring right back at me.

Since the 24th of September, I have made my way through each day with the help and support of family and friends. Some days I have slipped and nearly drowned, only to be pulled back to shore again. These people have their own ships to sail now, and soon I will be standing on the shore as a mother alone. But if you listen very carefully, you will hear me roar.