I suppose the first thing I think about is his wedding ring. I wear it round my neck, so that we're together all the time. That way I don't feel that I've entirely lost him. You know, when we went to get our wedding rings they didn't have any in his size. The biggest one on the market was still too small, so they had to make it even bigger. We laughed about that regularly. It's not surprising his daughter came up with "sausagefingers" for his email address. I find myself holding the ring all the time, even when I'm not thinking about it.
But to be honest, all around the house there are things of Harry's. Things that he collected like teaspoons and things he made himself at the arts and craft sessions every week at Age UK. Obviously, some of it was very rough but there's something freeing in doing something creative and not necessarily trying to be great at it. He just loved it. It might be painting on tiles or decorating a mug. You know, I've got a mug in the kitchen hanging up with all the other mugs that he did his artwork on.
He seemed to have locked onto primroses, so they mean a lot to me now. He especially liked drawing and painting them. I have primroses in the garden now and, you know, I look across at them and just sort of smile.
It's a happy accident that one of his hobbies turned into making a lot of things I can keep.
After the stroke and dementia diagnosis, I thought it was very important to quickly get him doing things. Just for the joy of doing it. I didn't quite know how he'd take to it but he did. That sense of joy, of curiosity was there until the end. It didn’t exactly take him back to his childhood, but it was bringing something new to his life at a time when there were lots of things he couldn't do anymore.
I was an art teacher, so it took me back, too. I loved seeing his pleasure in trying something new. It made him proud of himself, which I think is a very important thing. It's so easy after a stroke to just go into the depression. But I wanted to push him forward. I'd make sure we did something each day, just to keep it up. After the stroke he could barely talk, he had aphasia, and we had a wonderful person helping us once a week. In the end, if you didn't know, you really wouldn't notice anything wrong other than him being old and not being able to remember a few words here and there.
I was very proactive in seeking out organisations that worked with people like him, after his stroke. One of these places used to organise trips out to London, to see old musicals around Christmas time. It just makes life worthwhile. I just didn't want us to become those people who sit at home and mope with nothing to do, so then they stagnate and get worse. We’d never been like that. Harry used to say: "You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He’s started out life as a tool maker and progressed to chemical engineering. So he’d never had much opportunity for creativity or a sense of adventure. Before he was ill, we travelled a lot; a cruise to the Baltics, river cruises down the Danube and the Douro, Kenya, India, China, Canada, New England, Peru, the Galapagos Islands and a half-world cruise to Australia, that took in Antarctica. We had such fun. I could have done with him not going off so early.
Even out of the house I get reminded of him a lot. I get that feeling when I go out for a meal and I see fish and chips on the menu because when we came back from the art group, we'd stop off at the Beefeater. And he'd study the menu, and study it, and nine times out of ten, he'd say "You know what? I think I'll do the fish and chips." So I still have a little laugh to myself.