Have you used any other way of sort of coping with all this? Did you keep a memory box or have you done anything else at all?

Yes, I have got a memory box and I’ve kept some of the things Matt had. I don’t know if it’s a good thing but his, he had a red filing box and I’ve kept that. And I have got a little book and after [he died] we planted a tree.

Mm.

I write notes from time to time, I used to do it more often. And I don’t do it as often now, and that’s not, and I asked myself recently actually why I did it less often, it would be nice to think that it was because I didn’t need to, I don’t think it is that, when I really, when I feel low, I think I, I say to myself it’s because “What’s the point?” But I don’t often feel like that, and it’s just, in a strange way it’s I feel I’m communicating with him.

So you write notes to him?

They’re, they’re a mixture. Sometimes they’re just a note about, came today, sometimes I say, came with Henry the dog and, I describe you know, if it’s spring time and whether there are leaves are coming out and what the flowers are around, and I saw a particular bird. Sometimes it’s just like that. Sometimes it has been, I actually do say, “Matt,” you know.

Do you keep the notes?

Yes I’ve got it in a little book, yes, yes. And sometimes, earlier on I told him when you know new grandchildren had come, because he, he was alive when my daughter had, her first two were born and our sons first daughter was born, but the others have come since, so.

Do you have a spiritual faith that helps you or not?

No, I wish, I want to have. I was brought up as a strict Methodist and I, but it’s a long, a long time ago that I even, I even when I was in the 6th form, I began to question things. I think perhaps I had too much of a, going to church three times a, and I began to question things and it was mostly seeing children, suffering with cancer and things which made me think that you know I can’t reconcile this, I can’t find any answers, so I [sigh], I suppose it, well I, yes I have lost faith and yet there is a small part of me which just occasionally, particularly when I’m out walking and there’s a lovely, lovely day and, and some small part of me, just for fleeting seconds, I think there has to be something more than this, and, then I think perhaps it’s arrogant of man to think that just because we can’t understand it, there isn’t something else, so there is still, there is still some part of me that, well there’s a spiritual dimension to me and there is some part of me which wants it to be a Christian belief. So, I, I go on hoping that, that I might you know, find some faith but...

Mm.

...I don’t know. But I haven’t entirely, I haven’t entirely dismissed it. That’s sounds very silly doesn’t it but …

No, does that, does that help you with your…

It would help me.

With your loss of Matt, does it help?

Yes it, yes it would help me, it does help me, and I do, I do, I, I, I say a prayer every night, and I, I think why? Why do I? I think of Soames in the Forsyte Saga who, who said, he said his prayers as a sort of insurance policy, just in case there was anyone there. I don’t do that. I don’t think I, that’s not my conscious motivation so I think there has to be still some, there’s still some part of me that, and I sometimes talk to, well, yes I do, I sort of talk to Matt, when I’m in a bit of a quandary about things I sometimes say, “Oh I, help me to”, you know, “go on the right lines.” So there, there must be, there is a spiritual dimension.