There is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Sometimes I worry that James may have been on loan to us. That some evil Svengali puppet master in the sky thought…. ah that Anderson household, they seem to be having way too much fun, let’s put a stop to that.

There are bigger, better people than me, who when something like this befalls them, never once say- why me?- They can accept it and the fact that it’s out of their control, they can feel happy for what they did have, even grateful. I am not that person. I’m not one for self-pity either so I don’t think why me? What I really think is- Why Angela?- This is what makes me really angry.

I felt most angry that as day was closing in on a Tuesday in London, I was sitting telling my children, then both under six, that we were going to get in a taxi and it was going to take us to see Daddy, to say goodbye. We were doing this while other parents were putting their children in baths and reading them bedtime stories. Most people never have to do this but I did and I’m more than a little bit cross about it. How could I tell my children that their Dad was on loan while others had theirs for keeps? I felt like I was repaying a bad gambling debt to some nasty bailiff.

My anger knows no bounds. It’s a comfortable bed fellow keeping me warm and toasty at night. Some people ask me how I cope and really the answer is with the help of my friend anger. I don’t know where I’d be without it.

I’m most angry whenI think of the power that J’s tumour had over our family. That we couldn’t even enjoy a happy moment because it was always there, lurking in the shadows threatening us with it’s wretched power. When I think of the cowardly residence of my enemy, hiding unreprimanded in my husband’s brain. Could I reach it, I would annihilate it, and then the ridiculousness of its size. My enemy is the size of a grape. I could squash it with my angry foot.

The below is a wonderful short, which shows how a young girl deals with grief and the cyclical process of life. It helped me, with Celeste particularly, explain what goodbye really means.

All flesh is grass.

For Sarah Power