Memorials

After the elation of the all clear came the relief and then the exhaustion. I was up in Belfast for a celebratory meal with T and barely made it home before conking out. Almost three months of high stress has a legacy that isn't easily dissipated. You seem to have to work your way back down to everyday levels of stress. It's like travelling down a large multi-storey car park and stopping on each of the floors to acclimatise.

To help this process, I'm going away to visit family and friends for a while; a trip to Wales and England that had been put on hold whilst I was waiting for my scan appointment. It's also a time of memorials: the anniversaries of the deaths of my good friend Jean Morgan (9 April) and my father (11 April). These anniversaries will be marked in different ways: Jean's husband Phil has arranged a get together in Gloucester at a rugby game, and the day before I will put flowers on my father's grave and go for a walk in the Malverns (a place where I feel particularly close to him).

I'm going over by ferry to Holyhead and will first stay in Snowdonia for a couple of days. I plan to walk the Snowdon Horseshoe, the hillwalk that Gill was doing on the day she died. There is a memorial to her that I carved from a piece of slate and placed there in 1987 on the occasion of her ashes being scattered. It's a place I've returned to a good number of times, but not since I became ill almost three years ago.

It's very good to make and return to memorials. You are marking out people who mattered in your life and giving them a special place of memory. You dont need a focal place to do this, but it can help - I've made a memorial to Gill in every place I've lived. For when someone who has departed really matters, they are with you all of the time.