Some Days Even I'm Under a Cloud............

You know me.........sunny disposition, never let the b******s grind me down.

I carry my optimism and cheerfulness like a banner before me.

Wherever I go people wave at me, they shout after me, "Aye up, Sue! Howya doin'?"

(Admittedly some also shout "Go home you loony!" and "Have you forgotten to take your medication today?")

But today is a particularly sad day for me.

Today, I don't feel like being cheerful.

Two years ago today, the bottom fell out of my world.

Liam, my much loved partner, lost his battle with cancer. He was 54.

Before we became partners in 2000, we had been friends for 30 years. People often asked us why we had taken so long to fall in love with each other.

Liam 1970 just before we first met

Liam and I often wondered that ourselves, and discussed it on numerous occasions.

Quite simply, by the time we fell in love, we had both matured. We had grown up.

We had both lived through various life experiences that had given us an inner strength that neither of us possessed in our younger years. It had taken all of that - for us to become compatible!

Liam and me Summer 2001

We had eight very happy years together, and I miss him terribly. But I have such lovely memories of our time together.

Many of you have read about our escapades in previous posts.

We were always laughing!

Since his death, neighbours have remarked that they used to hear us giggling walking down the street in the evenings. They always assumed we were on our way home from the pub! The truth is neither of us touched alcohol.

Liam was only diagnosed 4 months before his death. We both had some savings and I asked him if there was anywhere he would like to go before he died.

He told me that he wanted to be where he had spent the happiest years of his life.

"Do you want to go back to Texas?" I asked him. (He had lived there in the early 1980's.)

Liam in Texas 1983

He said, "No, you daft bugger. I want to be here with you, business as usual."

Liam 14th March 1954 - 6th November 2008

I saw this quote the other day. It's about unconditional love.

'The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them'.

Thomas Merton.

I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, but I think I just needed to.

In my next post, I will show you the inventions I've come up with in my lab!