The worst day of my life. Twenty-three years on...

Today is the anniversary of the death of my first husband. Some time ago, my agent agreed that I should write a kind of memoir about widowhood, but afterwards, while she liked it, she decided that it wouldn't sell because I'm not famous. This passage describes the interval between my arriving at the hospital waiting to see whether resuscitation attempts would succeed, and his death half-an-hour later. Posting it is self-indulgent, so please feel free to ignore it. But I wanted to do something in his memory, and this is it.

So I waited. The hospital chaplain, a gentle man with a wonderful quality of stillness, came and sat with me. We made conversation. Was he married? I asked. No. Not married. Time passed. I think I drank the tea. I knew as I sat there that whatever happened, I would never forget that room. The low coffee table, the chairs we were sitting in, and oddly, the small sapling growing in the grounds outside. I remember looking at that stunted little tree and knowing that I would always remember it. That hospital has been closed now, and the grounds redeveloped; that little tree will have been destroyed. But it will remain in my memory as a part of the backdrop to the worst day of my life.

I had often thought about how I would react if John were to die. I had tried to imagine the pain, the sheer awfulness, and I'd envisaged myself lying on the ground, beating it with my fists, howling and screaming. “Do not go gently into that good night,” wrote Dylan Thomas. Well, I was never going to let John go gently; I was going to rail and scream and protest; to “rage against the dying of the light”. I wouldn’t be able to help myself.

But when the doctor came to give me the news, I was almost calm. The tears flowed unstoppable down my cheeks – not so much drops, as a steady flood - but I sat and listened to what he said, and took in nothing at all. All I knew was that John was dead. John was dead. Even writing it now, all these years later, there is a sense of disbelief.

In Rose McCauley’s book The Towers of Trebizond, there is a passage about the death of the heroine's lover. She writes: “Vere is dead, and it is too outrageous to be true”. I have never forgotten those words. The death of someone you love – indeed, the death of anyone – is indeed too outrageous to be true. That a human being can simply – cease. Just like that. It is outrageous. Belief in a God and an afterlife may be helpful, but as far as this life - this world - is concerned, that person has gone. Later, I would think of John's wonderful mind; his broad interests; his energy and enthusiasm; the huge breadth of his knowledge. How could all that be snuffed out just because one of his organs had ceased to function? It was, quite literally, unbelievable.....

............I was asked whether I would like to see him now, and my immediate response was, no.

But even as I said it, I knew that I would have to see him; that I needed to see him. Because there are some things that you cannot take in unless you have seen them for yourself. And I needed to say goodbye.

Together, the chaplain and I walked up the ward to John's screened-off bed. It was little more than twelve hours since I had last made this short journey the previous evening with the boys. We had all chatted together, planning John's homecoming. Now, there was to be no homecoming.

John looked peaceful, and I spared a grateful thought for the nurses who must have tidied him up for me after the abortive attempts to save him. I noticed that his pyjama jacket was soaked (borrowed pyjamas, because he didn't usually wear them), and imagined an intravenous infusion being torn or spilt in the rush. I stroked his head, and it was still warm. It was like coming into a room just after someone has left it; embers in the fireplace, a chair still warm from the last occupant, but no-one there. Heartbreakingly, I had arrived just too late. For the last time, I bent to kiss my husband.

Many years before, when we were first married, we used to go to our local pub for beer and (as an occasional treat) chicken in a basket. On one of these occasions, I clearly remembered John turning to me and saying: “Just think. One day, one of us is going to die in the other's arms.” But now that would never happen. I had let John down. I had been unable to keep my side of that bargain, and there would never be another chance. In my career as a nurse, I had been with many people as they died, and it seemed particularly cruel that I couldn't be there for the person who most needed me. That is something that will always haunt me.

An anniversary

Today is the nineteenth aniversary of my first husband's death.

You never forget anniversaries. I didn't realise this until it happened to me, but as the years roll round and we come yet again to February 12th, everything comes back .

I remember so clearly the phone call (he was in hospital at the time), the mad rush to get someone to take our two younger children to school, the fact that the car wouldn't start (our cars never started in the winter), the crazy dash to the hospital. And arriving too late.

There are little things, too. The flowers - so many arriving almost at once, that we had to borow vases. Someone phoning to ask if there was anything they could bring (more tissues, please), the crowds of people sho suddenly seemd to appear. And worst of all, telling the children.

Two were at school, and they were brought home by a teacher so that I could tell them myself. But two were in London, and I had to find a kind friend to track down my daughter, so that she didn't have to be told by the hospital authorities (she was a student nurse). I am still appalled that she cried all the way home on the train, and no-one - no-one at all - stopped to ask her if they could help. I remember a neighbour who had come round saying "she wants me to light a fire, but she doesn't really need one, does she?" (why on earth did I want a fire lit?), and the birthday cake my small son made for me (my birthday was the day before the funeral) but which nobody ate.

The funeral was huge. He had been a headmaster, and the entire school turned out for it, but we also had lots of friends and family, too. We didn't want black cars, so my brother-in-law drove us. The car had heated seats; I'd never come across those before. I remember the lovely funeral director saying "I've got children at the school. I only sent them there because of Dr. Garrood". And there was the tiny bunch of snowdrops - our special flowers - that I dropped onto his coffin; and the mud and the wind and the cold of that day, like a funeral in a film.

And then the long, long journey afterwards; finding out that with grief, there are no short cuts. The evening when I drove out into the country and screamed and screamed and screamed. That helped. The journey the children had to take; a different one for each, because they were different people at very different stages of their lives. One of my sons checking on me at night, to make sure I was still alive. And all those anniversaries.

We are all right now. We have survived (we had no choice, really), but we have all been affected. I have married John, who has been wonderful, and the children are all well and happy. But for all of us, the scar is there; not as painful, but there. And sometimes it flares up, reminding us of the huge gap he has left. And one small granddaughter still weeps for the grandfather she never knew.