Goodbye my friend

Today is a day for pause and reflection, as today my friend Alex who committed suicide will be laid to rest. There is a big funeral in Islington that I am sure will be attended by many, many people. My friend had a way of touching the lives of everyone he met, and bringing warmth, light and love with him wherever he went. The world is certainly a less interesting place without his presence, and the Boy and I hope he has found the peace he couldn't find in this life now.

Another funeral - which would be our fourth in six months - feels too much for us, especially as this one will be such a big occasion and coming so swiftly on the back of us burying Baby Beans. So later this morning the Boy and I will go to our local church to say a private goodbye to a very special person. The last time we were there was to hear our wedding banns being read, in February last year, so today will be somewhat different.

As I prepare to say goodbye to my friend, memories of my time with him swim to the front of my mind. He was such a funny, lovely person. We spent a crazy weekend in Berlin together, just before I met the Boy, and many, many lost nights in Shoreditch. He loved the Golden Heart pub on Commercial Street and I shared many a pint with him in the Poet - the local pub to our work - on Folgate Street.

I remember one time a colleague had bought a scotch egg to have before we went out to the pub after work. Alex and I stole it from his desk when he went to the toilet and left him a ransom note for it, demanding he come to the pub immediately - where we had persuaded the bar staff to put the scotch egg in their fridge behind the bar. Alex had a way of enticing people to do anything for him.

I remember nights in with him watching the Scream and Scary Movie trilogies back to back in his flat in Tooting, while gorging ourselves on olives and houmous from his local Sainsburys and knocking back the wine.

I remember a day we both called in sick to work (hey, we were young!) and we lay in my bed all day watching Mean Girls over and over again, reciting the lines to each other. Alex had a memory like no other, and it always used to astound me as he would recount every detail from a conversation or a night out we'd had months and months later.

I remember us laughing so much I thought I would burst at a poster that had been put up for a lost cat in my street. It was entitled 'Have you seen my little girl?' and underneath was a picture of the most horrible cat you have ever seen, one of those hairless ones that looks like a plucked chicken. How we laughed, and ever since then I would get texts at random times from him that just read 'Have you seen my little girl?' and it would always bring a smile to my face.

I remember him driving the van full of all my gear when I moved into Empire Towers and it being about half an hour before we had to get the van back and it was still full of all my bits and bobs. We were literally flinging everything out into the communal hallway, laughing in that hysterical way that you do when you're under pressure, and we got the van back to the hire place in Vauxhall a matter of minutes before the deadline.

So many good times that jostle to the front of my mind, I also remember the bad times, when he first became ill and we first realised he had mental health problems. The first time he went missing and none of us could find him. He turned up months later after having lived under a hedge in Victoria Park, thinking he was married to Will Young... I wish we'd been able to reach him and that he'd managed to get the help he so badly needed and deserved, then I wouldn't be writing down my memories of him, we'd be creating new ones together...

But if there's one thing I've learned this year about life, it is what it is. Everyone's time here is limited and some don't get very far on their journeys. For the time A was with us and he was my friend, he made my journey that bit more colourful, my load that bit lighter and my soul that bit happier. And that is how I will remember him, today - and always. Goodbye my friend Alex. You will be missed.

Two months on

Another day, another deep breath. It's two months today since our little tiny Baby Beans was delivered in St Thomas's Hospital. Every day can be different, but today it feels like that was a long time ago. It feels like the version of Elly Beans who was around then wasn't really me, but more of a shadow self, and it feels increasingly like I'm back in my own skin.

Today, so far, feels a good day. I woke early, but after a decent night's sleep. I've been a bit restless the last few nights. It's been so warm in the flat we've had to have the windows open, every noise outside disturbs me, and the sun tickles through our window blinds from dawn. But last night an eye mask and some earplugs sourced by the Boy did the trick.

We started the day off well - we recently had a rent rebate (we live in a shared ownership flat, so we own a percentage of the flat and we pay rent on the other part) as we paid too much rent last year. We wondered (briefly!) about saving the money but have decided instead to have a holiday in Sardinia in September, after my work annual conference and the Boy has run the Great North Run.

I think we'll be ready for another rest then, and as I've said before in these pages having things to look forward to at the moment and quality time together planned helps us both stay sane and keep going forwards. It breaks life into smaller manageable chunks, which lets us relax a bit - a big help as we try to move a bit further along the road. We're getting there, I can feel that and I know that. It seems heart and head have connected once again, and - while we'll never forget our first tiny baby - that can only be good news.

Guilty pleasures

The Boy is out tonight having a few drinks with an old friend in London town, so I have a rare night in at Empire Towers on my own. I've done two loads of washing and dusted the flat, so with my halo shining I think it's time to kick back and relax. On nights like this, when it's just me at home, there's little I enjoy more than a couple of celebrity magazines and full control of the remote. Simple pleasures! Guilty pleasures, as I always feel slightly naughty for indulging myself in some of the more downmarket weekly gossip magazine titles, as if they are in some way beneath me.

Tonight, while perusing this week's heat magazine, I read with interest that the Wilson Phillips song Hold On is featured in the film Bridemaids. I am super keen to see this film, but I digress - Hold On is a song that takes me straight back to my early adolescence, as I was 13 when this was released in 1990. I adored this song, listening to the cassette over and over again on my red Sony walkman with large orange foam-covered headphones. Imagining myself as one of the band, belting out the lyrics into my red hairbrush in front of my red mirror (yes, red was my favourite colour at the time). Washed with nostalgia I've just looked this track up on youtube and I wasn't disappointed. It's every bit as I remembered and the video made me smile. I think I spent the whole of 1990 in a black halterneck top, or a white shirt buttoned up to my neck and tucked into my (stonewash) jeans, with a waistcoat over the top.

I feel a strong connection with this song to this day, and it's funny it's just popped back into my periphery, as so many of the lyrics are relevant for how I feel right now... "You could sustain", "Things can change", "Things can go your way"... Suddenly I'm 13 again. Twenty years ago. I wasn't such a happy person then, I won't pretend I had the best time as a teenager (perhaps more on that another time) but things could change then - and then can now. So I'll "hold on for one more day"...

Two steps forward, two steps back?

It's been - as seems to be par for the course at the moment - an emotional few days. The Boy and I had a weekend packed with quality time: a meal and drinks out Friday, comedy gig with Omid Djalili on Saturday night in Soho where we were lucky enough to meet him afterwards, and then Twenty20 cricket in Beckenham with my parents on Sunday - and there were some really happy times. I am so thankful every day for having the Boy in my life, because a day when I am with him will always be a good day. But amongst this there were sad times too. I got terribly upset on Saturday morning and was quite overwhelmed with tears, I think a combination of mourning my friend who we lost the Saturday before and also feeling sad about the loss of Baby Beans.

I wonder when, or if, it starts to hurt less. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing so well and being so strong, but at other times I'm pulled right back and my heart throbs and aches once more. I find it astounding how much the loss of the baby actually hurts - the pain seems disproportionate for something that was only with us for 13 precious weeks. Sometimes I feel so guilty about how keenly I feel the baby's loss. Of all the losses we've had this year, this one has bruised me the most and I'm not sure whether that's how it should be. But, it is what it is and I'm not going to give myself a hard time about what I feel. I made a pact with myself early on that I am going to go with this process, trust my heart and body will pull me in the right direction, and hope that at some point I'll come out of it the other end. I know I'm on the way to healing, it's not going to happen overnight and I just need to be patient for that bit longer. My horoscope in Look magazine told me today: "Change is in the air, but it's not quite here yet. Usually that sort of uncertainty would make a well-organised person like you tetchy, but try to keep calm. Good things can happen by taking a back seat and seeing where you end up." Do they know me?!

I can feel movement though. This morning two heavily pregnant women got on the tube at Waterloo, in colourful maternity dresses with big bumps on show, laughing and talking together. And the first thing I did was smile. Granted, after that I did feel a bit envious and I was reminded of our loss, but the first emotion I felt was happiness and I enjoyed watching them interact. That's a first, and am important one I feel. They looked really joyful, and full of life and excitement. It was nice to see, on a tube full of grey suits, and raised my hopes that I could be in that position one day. So - one step forward.

And perhaps another step forward too... My lady has left the building so from yesterday the Boy and I have begun trying for a family again. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much - I know it can take your body a while to settle down after a fairly late miscarriage like we had and at the moment it's more important for the priority to be intimate and close with the Boy, and then hope that a baby will follow... but I am of course crossing everything - except my legs! - and hoping that there might be some good news for Mr and Mrs Beans soon enough... we'll see what the future holds for us.

A new chapter

Finally after weeks of wondering what has been going on with this old body of mine, my lady made her reappearance yesterday. I had expected that I would find this quite upsetting - being my first lady since January and real physical proof that I'm not pregnant - but in the end it was fine. It's actually quite a relief that everything is getting back to normal and beginning to settle down after all the recent trauma, as now it hopefully means we can begin our quest to become parents again in earnest.

It feels good to have a bit more certainty back in my life. The past few weeks, even months, there's been a lot of wondering and questioning on my part and I feel quite a lot a more relaxed now that something solid has happened. I suppose it is also a sign that the miscarriage is completely over - physically at any rate - and that feels like a relief as well, as waiting for my lady has also meant waiting for the completion of our baby's loss and for a semblance of normality to resume. I feel optimistic for the future, and ready and hopeful to try again. Unexpectedly I find myself almost feeling happy at the thought of it. This whole ride really has been quite unpredictable so far - I've felt good at times when I've least expected it, and then I've felt the depths of despair when seemingly everything around me has been ok. So, I go with the emotions whatever they are, in this instance my heart knows better than my head.

The Boy is as usual being really supportive and making me smile. While we were getting ready for work this morning I mentioned that perhaps I could do some charting of good days this month or get some fertility sticks - I guess I feel so ready now to be pregnant I want to do everything I can to encourage it to happen quickly. The Boy looked like he was pondering this, and then he said with a faux serious look on his face - "No, I think we should just have fun and games every day, out of duty of course - it'll be quite a hardship but I can take one for the team" and then he flashed me his winning smile. It's little things like this that make me warm inside even when the world is cold and crumbling around us - as it has been this week with the loss of our friend - and I still thank my lucky stars he came into my life. I don't like to think where I'd be without him.

So, I guess here we are. The time has come when we are both physically, emotionally and mentally ready to try again. The past forgiven but not forgotten. Baby Beans and the legacy of love always a part of us as we go forwards. The future a blank page. A new chapter in our lives waiting to be written. Deep breath time. Everything crossed again. Rabbit's foot rubbed and four leaf clover at the ready. The roller coaster has pulled into my station and I'm ready for the journey ahead. All aboard!

Computer says no

I took my first pregnancy test since February this morning. I still haven't had a period - or my 'lady' as I affectionately call it! - since the miscarriage, which was nearly eight weeks ago now. Eight weeks. That amount of time makes me catch my breath a bit, although it's starting to feel like time has passed and I feel like we're slowly moving on to the next chapter in our lives.

While the Boy and I haven't actively been trying since we lost baby Beans, we have been intimate regularly so I had a little voice at the back of my head whispering about what the reason for my lady's no-show might be. While I didn't think or feel I was pregnant and had no symptoms to speak of, there was an element of doubt, and of possibility. I bore this for a few days. For me, sometimes it's easier to hide in a grey world of maybes than live in a black and white world of fact - but I knew this could only be a temporary state so I decided to take a test.

I felt very nervous doing it. My fingers fumbled over unwrapping the box and I re-read the instructions several times. I waited for a few minutes wondering - and if I'm honest with myself, hoping - but the test was negative, so I guess I need to try and be patient and hope that my body all settles down again in due course. I'm finding the waiting for normality to resume quite difficult, but in the grand scheme of things it's still pretty early days. While I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, I trust that my body knows what it's doing and hopefully we will have a different result soon enough.

When the miscarriage happened I spent a lot of time asking myself 'why me?' and 'why us?'. Why were the Boy and I the unlucky ones and why had this happened to us in particular? I think it's very difficult not to ask these questions in the early days, when you're frantically searching for answers that just aren't there. I immediately wondered what I had done wrong, or what we had done to deserve this. I felt like the victim and the guilty party all at once. And at times I still do. The guilt has ebbed away because I know I didn't do anything wrong - I know I followed all the guidelines and took the best care of our baby that I could, and having the explanation of the low hormone levels helps me accept that I'm not to blame. But the 'victim' mentality can sometimes haunt me, especially when I'm feeling sad or tired, and I have to yank myself back from that path and force my eyes forwards. It's the only way to stay sane.

In recent weeks the question has shifted and I've begun to ask 'why not me?' and 'why not us?'. The odds can be as long as they are (and I still greedily consume them - yesterday I read 0.5 per cent of babies are lost after a heartbeat is heard at 10 weeks...) but the Boy and I have as much chance as anyone of experiencing sadness - and happiness - in our lives. I feel more vulnerable these days. Before we lost the baby I didn't think about pain and loss very much. The Boy and I had led pretty sheltered lives, and apart from losing one of my best friends when we were 20, my life hadn't really been touched by death. I guess it's that old cliche that I always saw it as something that happened to other people.

But within the vulnerability there is also a sense of relief. I have a tendency to try and control my life and the world, and that is quite a pressure. 'Why not us?' reminds me that this life is fragile and cannot be controlled, we are all open to warmth and loss, and it is what it is - the good days are there to be seized and enjoyed, and the bad days must be endured and survived. Fear not, I'm not about to do a Robin Williams and run around shouting 'Carpe diem!' but I feel a little bit freer now to take life a day at a time, and a little bit more able to take my light and peace when it comes and where I find it.

And 'why not us?' works both ways, of course. I find myself wondering if I will fall pregnant again and if the Boy and I will be able to experience a family of our own one day. Or will we be one of those couples who battle on for years to come, and never manage to achieve their goal. Those concerns can prey heavy on my mind, and I long for us to be lucky and to have the family we want. But now I can tell myself why shouldn't we have our dreams - 'why not us?' and 'why not me?'. Why not?

Night falls

The Boy and I had some sad news last night. A friend of ours - a former colleague and very close friend of mine - committed suicide on Saturday. We had lost touch with him in recent years as his increasing mental health problems had made his behaviour very difficult and erratic. While we did what we could to be understanding and supportive, he had deliberately moved away from older friends in the last few years - finding it easier I think to spend time with newer acquaintances who didn't know his full history.

I was aware he had been through some very dark times and he had gone missing a few times, once for months on end. So I suppose in truth, deep in my heart I had wondered if this day might come and I might hear this news. He had been so very troubled and unable to find peace in this world. But it is such a loss - he was a very warm, bright and colourful person, and I have no doubt the world has lost a little bit of light with him no longer in it.

While we hadn't been close for a time, he had been a good friend to me and I have many happy memories of him. I think together we kept some of the landlords in Shoreditch in business, and we took a very crazy trip to Berlin together the two of us just before I met the Boy. He had been the one who helped me move into Empire Towers - the one who drove the van and helped me carry the (very) many boxes up the two flights on stairs to my new flat. And then he was the one who took me to my new local boozer to help me celebrate my new home. In his typical fashion we didn't leave without knowing all the names of the new bar staff!

Today I am thinking of the times we spent together and hoping that my friend has found the rest and peace where he is now, that he couldn't find in this world and in this life. I find suicide so sad. I think it's one of those things that everyone has an opinion about - some think it an evil waste of life, some think it is a selfish act, some think it always wrong, some are left feeling angry and guilty with questions that can never be answered... I've certainly had some black and white ideas about the issue in the past, but this is my first - and hopefully last - experience of losing someone in this way. The feeling that arises in me with this friend is one of tremendous sorrow and regret. That a flame that burned so brightly and was so intoxicating to be around, was slowly subsumed by mental illness and depression until the fire flickered out. Sleep tight my friend, you will be missed.