So. Jon. Am I allowed to grieve a man who left me ? Am I allowed to feel as wretched as I do ? What is allowance ? Jon was that one love in my life, I have loved before but what we had was extraordinary to me. I'd not known love like that before. I wouldn't be who I am today if I had not met him, had not stayed when the going got tough, I couldn't leave him when things got bad I loved him too much. Loving him didn't mean I didn't get angry with him. Didn't try to fight back when he was unkind. It didn't mean that I was a saint. He got things wrong and I got things wrong. 
His death has made me realise what a waste of time all that anger was, both his and mine, how anger becomes a defence mechanism, how anger protects the heart but also walls it in. I loved him so much. That love is flooding back to me now. I'm remembering the way we played. How we made love, I'm not just talking sex, I'm talking about all the everyday things couples do together, the way you learn to read people that you want to be close to so that very tiny gestures become expressions of love. 
I only found out yesterday evening when he died and how. Those concrete facts help in a way. The solidity of information is ballast when I am feeling far away, out of body, and not really sure what who where I am. He died on October 10th* and was found two days later I do not know who by. I dreamed of him on the morning of the 11th, woke at 3ish from a dream about him. We were in his kitchen in his home in Bungay, a home that is mapped out in my heart, a home I thought of as home too although it was not mine to call home. We were baking a cake together. He loved cake. And laughing and flirting. And the room was filled with golden light. It feels good that we were together, albeit only in a dream, that last night. 
I'm blogging because I need to note down all the feelings I am going through. I am messy. Everyday is filled with tears. Sometimes my legs buckle and I have to stand still and let myself cry until the moment passes. Sometimes I want to curl into a ball. I want to hold him and tell him I love him. 
Today I have been in my garden. We shared each others gardens. My garden was bigger than his, more untidy and he'd do manly jobs that I didn't have the strength or stamina to begin let alone finish. He cut a fine figure in the garden, handsome and rugged. He glowed. And my garden for a little while took on a semblance of order which is long gone now though he created a bone structure, built beds and my beloved compost heaps, laid out the gravelled courtyard space by my back door, and dug holes for ponds. It feels like a lifetime ago now. It is a lifetime ago now. 
His garden was pretty in a different way. When I met him he had just moved in. We watched the tadpoles in his pond turn into tiny frogs, the solitary bees nest in the bee house. And the flowers he grew were amazing. Sunflowers and white cosmos and fennel. And all sorts of hardy perennials I'd never seen or heard of before.
We shared plants. He took forget-me-nots and jasmine from mine and gave me crocosmia and a purple plant that I had to ask him the name of every year and now I will just have to call "Jon's bee plant". These are some of my precious memories. Some of the light that is filling me, compensating for the dreadful darkness that is knowing he never will show up at my door and put his arms around me. That we will never go for another walk. I will never hold his hand. Or snuggle up on the sofa to watch his beloved rugby with him.
When we used to go walking we'd play going on a bear hunt .. say "we're going on a bear hunt, we're going to catch a big one, we're not scared, uh oh grass/mud/some-other-natural-obstacle" it goes on to "we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we've got to go through it" .. so it feels now, this awful grief, one day at a time, or more like moment by moment. I am in strange country now and  I feel lost .. like I am floating .. I'm not sure what is real any more .. I know I am alive but I do not really feel alive. Is that normal ? I have never had grief like this before. Please if you read this blog feel free to comment if you have more experience with death than me. 

*postscript Jan 20th 2018 .. just before christmas 2017, about two months after being told of Jon's death, his family finally gave me the address of the cemetery in which he is buried with a picture of his tombstone .. marked Jonathan Michael Tyndale Hardy (his married name) .. the tombstone gave his day of death as the 11th October 2017 .. i feel it's important to add this postscript so that factual references, days, dates etc are as accurate as i have been told or know. It means that when i had the above mentioned dream he was still alive as i was dreaming.