Love means never, ever forgetting

For those who mourn, 30 years is no time at all!

In the August of 1992, a young woman named Rachel Nickell was murdered on Wimbledon Common. My husband John Merritt, working for The Observer as their chief reporter, was busy on the story.  He had been suffering from blood cancer for two years but between devastating bouts of chemo at the Hammersmith Hospital managed to do some of his best work. We had a three-year-old daughter and I was pregnant again. Against all the odds, I believed he would survive to raise our children with me.

It was not to be.

Early on the morning of August 17, 1992, I told my husband, as took his last breaths, that I loved him.

What more would I tell him now, if I could?

I would like him to know the person responsible for Rachel Nickell’s death was only finally convicted in 2008. And also, that a terrorist he was on the hunt for back then was behind the attack on the World Trade Towers in 2001 and that the terror unleashed on the world persists to this day.

I would tell him that the child he never met, except via ultrasound scan, has grown up to be an extraordinary young woman – a scholar of Mandarin, a qualified chef and a Teach First educator. That she has married an estimable young man and they are – incredibly – building a house together. This would come as perhaps the greatest surprise to him because for all his many qualities, John was not practical, believing that the greatest d-i-y tool ever invented was Blu-Tac! I would tell him that our friends and family have supported us unfailingly and that his great friend Alastair Campbell, who promised to care for us as if we were his own family, has done just that – despite the demands of Alastair’s subsequent extraordinary career.

My own life has had highs and lows. I wish I could have told John about my career editing Good Housekeeping magazine for 18 years, the awards, even an MBE - but more than that, the everyday triumphs and disasters of coping as a single parent. Nor was I able, except in my prayers, to share with him the pain of our beloved daughter Ellie losing her life at the age of just nine, after suffering from the same rare cancer that killed her father.

Yesterday I placed white roses on John’s grave and this morning at the time of his death I lit a candle for him at home. This Sunday, I will go to St Brides Fleet Street, the journalists’ church, where the page in the book of commemoration will be open at his name. 30 years is a long time to mourn. It is also, as all those who grieve know, no time at all.

I was widowed absurdly young at just turned 36.  I have now reached an age where my cohort in age are starting to face their own mortality, some - sadly - having already passed beyond the veil.  The last request that John had as he was dying, is one that I know is shared by so many of us when we realise our time here on earth is short. And it is this:

“Don’t forget me.”

I am writing this now, from the distance of 30 years, to reassure anyone who needs to know it that those we love are never, ever – ever - forgotten.

We who grieve, never forget.