Fairytale Relationships Do Exist When They Are Sustained by the Small Things.

This year has been marked by so much, but what will leave an indelible scar that I cherish were two moments death came to visit. Each time I was offered a lesson on just what love can be.

The year opened with the death of my children’s grandparents, Rueben and Irene, whose life slid alongside mine for the briefest time but with powerful importance. If they had made different choices, the chain of events that led to my children’s existence could have been broken. I owed them my greatest loves, yet I didn’t know enough about them. A couple whose love for each other was reminiscent of a great and timeless story.

There at their funeral, the hardwood of a pew which had seen so many tears and desperate prayers beneath me, their story unfurled. Two people who by a twist of fate had found themselves isolated on an island together to recover from tuberculosis in the 1950s. Would they have met otherwise is a question that can never be answered, but they would never part, not until their final day this year, again isolated in a strange time out of time. Even then they spent only hours, not on the same plane of existence.

Wasn’t the true fairytale the decades spent learning and re-learning each other as they changed and developed in themselves?

They taught me love can last but you have to express it. The love letters they shared right up until the last year spoke not just of the love they felt and wanted to share but that they knew how important it was to hear that you are loved. To feel loved.

They didn’t allow a sense of complacency to settle in, their love was a living active part of their lives, as though they knew how lucky they were and never forgot that. They showed me not who I wanted to be with, but who I want to be in a relationship. In all my relationships.

The second couple who have unknowingly taught me so much is Clare and Sandra. Their presence entered my life just before the pandemic. In them, I saw a love filled with laughter, total acceptance, and genuine treasuring of the other. I watched their eyes reach out to hold and caress, the depth of their feelings so unhidden. I listened to their words so often in celebration of each other. As I watched and listened, I felt reminded of the fairytale dream of happily ever after, yet here was something more.

The fairytale ending resonates with ‘in the hereafter’, some underlying narrative of always seeking, always having to work to attain something off in the distance. What I saw in Clare and Sandra was present, oh so fully present, right now.

They weren’t waiting for anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays to show each other just how precious they were. They weren’t waiting to enjoy every second of being truly seen, heard, and adored, they were completely aware of how happy they were and nothing could restrain that.

Importantly, because it wasn’t about anyone or anything but their truth, it shone out to me with a clear message,

‘you can have this too, we all can’

The unintended lesson that I experienced was that if you find a way to live fully as yourself, then you open the way to being fully loved.

So, what have I learned about love this year?

I’ve learned a little more about how to love, how important it is to shower those we love with our words, our eyes, the way we listen to them, the way we actively care, and the way we never allow ourselves to take them for granted.

I grew up wanting the fairytale and then grieving an illusion. What I know now is, if you want happily right now, you don’t hold back, not for yourself or those you love. You live fully, you allow yourself to be fully, unashamedly you, and you allow yourself to be loved.

If you do that, happily ever after might just follow.

Sandra was an incredible poet and her powerful words will reverberate for decades to come. If you would like to support her wish for those who cared for her through the final months at Marie Curie Hospice in Liverpool to be given a new space to rest after working 12-hour shifts please click the link, every amount is appreciated. You will also be able to see and hear hundreds of people from all over the world reading her work.