Always On My Mind

by Beth Moran

After the longest silence, he placed a tentative hand against my cheek, leant in and kissed me. I felt like I’d come home. Well, if home was like the best, most exciting, delicious place ever. Like the world’s greatest theme park and music festival and restaurant all condensed into a couple of square centimetres of soft, fervent flesh.

Can you imagine what being a funeral director is like in a pandemic, when families aren’t even allowed a decent goodbye? It crushed him, devastated his family. Losing ourselves in a competition where the biggest loss was points on a scoreboard was literally our way to survive.’

‘They have these rules now, about physical contact. But being with you, being able to touch another person, and it be completely natural and easy, I have missed that. The last person who hugged me without having to ask permission was my niece, at my birthday party. That’s what I miss the most.’

That however bad things are, how woeful the diagnosis, there is hope that one day, we can get through it. We might never recover completely, but we can be happy, and whole enough, and life can be wonderful again.’

my parents, so determined to look at the best in people, at their successes and not their scars.

I’d had this picture in my head of how he’d be. His life a wreck. Broken. Lost. Weak. All those things I’d felt the need to be, too, in the years before my therapy. He was nothing like I feared. I don’t know why I never even contemplated that he’d still be so Elliot.

We all get in a mess at some point, Jessie. It’s what we do next that matters.’

‘While I wouldn’t want everyone watching me fumble through a few basic tasks, I’ve never felt like I had to be anyone but myself with you.’

realised, with a jolt, as I struggled to find a way to help Arthur see past his lovelorn longing to imagine how Elsa might feel, that the Boys to Men project had become tied up in my redemption. If I could help three men to see their dreams become a reality, then it would be one small, good thing to counterweight all the bad I’d contributed to so many years earlier.

‘No, but for some of them, the only time anyone touches them is to help them out of a chair or down a step. Arabella Goose said that she sometimes pretends she struggles with her cardigan because when one of the staff help her get it on it’s the closest she gets to a hug these days.’

I realised, then, what I suppose any sensible person would have known all along. Fancy meals, the right clothes, a tastefully decorated house, even clever conversation – these were not the things that the woman my brother loved needed from him. She’d have appreciated them, sure, but what she needed was a strong and steady heart. A shoulder to rest her weary head on. Not a man with everything sorted, but one prepared to sit with her on a grubby carpet and say, ‘It’s okay. I’m here. Take as long as you need.’

‘I’ve not got enough time left to spend it regretting what I did or didn’t do. Wishing it had been different. All I can do now is make the most of here and now, like today.’ She rested her papery hand on mine. ‘You should try it sometime.’

than you deserve. Which, if I haven’t said it enough, is someone so in love with you he can’t stop marvelling at how blessed he is to have you, and treats you accordingly.’

‘Looking back with what ifs and if onlys: those kind of regrets will only hurt you. They can’t change anything for the better. Trust me, I learnt that the hard way.’

These men and women had experienced loss countless times between them, and their pragmatic honesty, their ability to laugh and cry as they embraced the sadness, while at the same time celebrating a wonderful human being who’d lived a long life full of love, was a lesson I’d never forget.

But your family get alongside people at their most painful, difficult times, and make it as lovely as you can. That’s incredible work and I owe you a massive apology for ever thinking it was anything other than that.

I watched a couple of butterflies dancing past and thought about how someone could be in your life for a relatively short time, yet their impact be so profound that it echoed for years afterwards.

But then he’d look at me. Burst out laughing at the same joke on the television. Get out his phone to find where he’d made a note of something that had happened earlier that day that he’d thought I’d find interesting and therefore wanted to remember. How could anyone stay away from a man who feels like home?

‘I told you,’ Arthur replied. ‘Once you’ve found the one you’ve been waiting for, why wait any longer?’

office at me every workday. I turned back to Elliot, the boy who I had fallen in love with a lifetime ago. The man who had offered me the grace of forgiveness. Whose patient, unyielding love would, I trusted, enable me in time to forgive myself.