The Diary That Never Stopped

My darling one,

They tell me that after this lapse of time, they’re going to “presume” your death. They can’t. You’re not dead. I would know. I would feel it. When the telegram came — “Missing in action” — I felt the ground open beneath my feet. But I did not feel the world end. If you were gone, I would feel the world end. So you must still be somewhere.

I am writing this in the kitchen. Thomas is doing his sums at the table. Alice is playing with her doll on the rug. The kettle is boiling. Everything is ordinary. Everything is how it was when you left. I have not moved your chair. I have not cleared your pipe from the mantelpiece. I have not stopped expecting you to walk through the door and say, “Sorry I’m late, old girl. The traffic was terrible.”

I have felt you around me all day. Have you been thinking hard about me? Sometimes I feel your hand on my shoulder, and I turn, and no one is there. But you are there. You are always there. I talk to you constantly — when I’m hanging the wash, when I’m peeling potatoes, when I’m lying in the dark waiting for sleep. The children have started asking who I’m talking to. “Your father,” I say. And they nod, as if this makes perfect sense.

The bombs fell on Coventry again last night. Thomas hid under the stairs with Alice in his lap. He is seven years old and he was protecting his sister. You would be proud of him. I stayed in the kitchen and kept writing to you. I thought: if this is the night, I want to be writing to him when it happens.

The garden is blooming. The roses you planted are taller than I am. I cannot bear to cut them. I let them grow wild, the way you let everything grow wild. The neighbors think I’ve lost my mind. Perhaps I have. Perhaps this is what love looks like when it has nowhere to go.

Do you remember the day we met? The village fête. You were flying a kite for the children — not your own children, just strange children whose faces you had never seen. You were so patient with them, so gentle. I watched you for an hour before I introduced myself. “You’re good at that,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” you said. “Being a child, I mean.” I loved you from that moment. I will love you until I stop breathing. And then I will love you after that.

I have written 1,094 letters to you now. I will write one more. And then I will put away my pen. Not because I have stopped loving you. Because I have loved you so much that there are no words left in the English language for it.

I love you I love you I love you come back soon to your Doreen.

Your devoted wife, Doreen

P.S. — I will write to you until I can write no more. And then I will find you, and read them all to you.