When I was on holiday on the Isle of Arran back in August of 2007 I sat down and wrote an article I’d written many times over the years about the death of my mother. I’d wanted to explain what the process of losing her had been like from the first days up until years later when I’d come to terms with it. But every time I sat down to write it I just wouldn’t be happy with it and hit Delete. Not so this time.

I hadn’t really thought about the loss of my mother for a while but for some reason after a day out walking on the hills I just sat down and wrote Losing My Mother (what I believe to be the best piece of writing I’ve ever done) in about half an hour. When I read it back to myself with tears streaming down my face I realised I’d captured the essence of what the experience of losing my mother and learning to live with it was and is like. I handed it over to my good lady (who knew my mother very well and felt the loss almost as much as I did) to proof read (she proof reads most of what I post here believe it or not) and she soon had tears running down her face before agreeing that it was “a lovely article”. Almost immediately I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders having put into words what I’d spent the previous 5 years learning to live with.

But it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I actually published the article here and was very tempted to just post it with comments disabled. Fortunately I thought better of it and left comments open and I’m so glad I did. If you have a look at the comments people have left you can see that I’m by no means the only person this has happened to and a lot of people have thanked me for expressing the same things they’ve been feeling and offered their own thoughts too. From my point of view it’s so nice to realise that I’m not alone with other people out there having gone through the same thing as me. It’s given me a great deal of comfort and those people have often said they feel some comfort from what I’ve written.

Friends often ask me why I have this site and why I talk about my life so openly and I can never really answer them other than to say “because I do”. But writing a very personal post for me more than anybody else on a subject I’d not often talk about in the real world (it’s not a good topic to bring up at dinner parties) and getting so much positive feedback, connecting with people I’d never have touched otherwise is a pretty damn good reason if you ask me.

My dad has had a cat named Sparkie for the last five years, since just after my mother died. Sparkie’s been his constant companion and given him purpose, routine and been someone to talk to who never talks back (only meowing back which is much nicer) for all that time.

We’ve had a few cats over the years but Sparkie was originally brought up on a farm before my dad got him from the cat protection league so was a bit of a wildie, fighting off the local cats, bringing in mice from time to time and jumping up on every surface in the house. Whereas my dad’s getting on a bit Sparkie’s always been full of youthful exuberance in the way that only a young cat is, which I’m sure has been good for my dad. I took the following picture of him a couple of weeks ago when I was home and he was just his usual lovely, entertaining self and being very friendly:

Unfortunately a few days ago little Sparkie died. Cut down in the prime of his life at the age of around 8 it all happened very quickly in the end. It’s such a shame as he was a wonderful cat with a fantastic personality and he did my dad no end of good - I don’t know how my dad would have coped over that last few years without him. But the real shame is that I could never thank him for being there for my dad when he needed him because he was a cat and wouldn’t have understood the positive impact he had - he was just being himself. So thank you Sparkie, you will be sorely missed.

My mother died just over 5 years ago from cancer and not a day goes by that I don’t miss her. I thought it was about time I wrote about how losing her has changed the way I see the world, has changed me and what it’s been like trying to get my head around it all.

It’s true what they say, you can never really understand what it’s like until it happens to you. I once described losing my mother as like the sky suddenly falling down. My mother carried me for 9 months, gave birth to me, was the first sight I ever set my eyes upon, fed me when I was hungry, got no sleep for months when I woke her up crying at night, changed my nappies, watched me smile when I recognised her face, start to crawl, take my first steps, say my first word. She was always there for me, every memory I’ve ever had growing up has her in it. When I was upset she was there to cheer me up. When I needed advice it was her I sought out. And when I stepped out of line it was her who put me back in step. She was a strong, loving mother who I always knew was on my side, would do anything for me and my brother and gave us the perfect upbringing that made us the men we are today. I’d known her as my mother and as I became and adult I knew her as the woman Jean Conners with a devilish sense of humour and a certain innocence about her. She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever known. She had always been a huge part of my life and now that she’s gone I realise that I’d always assumed she would be.

You never expect the sky to fall down, the sky is always there and always will be. And that’s exactly how I felt about my mother.

When my father phoned me early one morning to tell me my mother was dying the first words I said to him were “you’re joking”. Obviously he wouldn’t, but my instinct was that it couldn’t be happening. Him phoning me again later (I can’t remember if I’d left to drive home or was just about to leave) to tell me she had died just didn’t seem real - I was numb. I arrived home before my brother (who’d been staying with me that weekend and was driving himself to my dad’s) and stepped into the hall. My dad came over to me and something I didn’t expect then happened. All my life my dad had been the one to comfort me in times of sadness but this time he was the one holding onto me and I was the one comforting him. It’s times like that you realise when you’ve grown up and become an adult. We were both inconsolable and if you ever find yourself imagining what a situation like that is like, imagine it a million times worse. And then when my brother turned up, well think a British billion times worse (that’s a million million). Even then, I still just couldn’t believe it.

In the months after her death I just couldn’t grasp that she was gone. I’d walk past an arts and craft shop and my first thought would be to take her there the next time she was down. I’d see something on TV that I knew she’d be interested in and I’d go to pick up the phone and call her before reality hit me. It was as though my brain just wouldn’t accept that she was gone forever.

Whenever I’d visit my father’s house I’d come down in the morning before anyone else was up and watch TV in the lounge like I always did. I’d be sitting there waiting for her to come in and sit next to me like she always did (we were early risers). I cried far more while she was suffering with cancer than after she died but on mornings like that I could never hold back the tears, sat there sobbing on my own waiting for someone that was supposed to always be there who I started to realise never would be again.

After some time - I couldn’t tell you how much - my brain dealt with things in a different way. I seemed to accept that she was gone and didn’t find myself about to call her any more. Instead she kept turning up in my dreams. Sometimes the dreams would be set in my childhood and it was only when I woke up that I’d feel sad, knowing I’d seen her again, or feel happy because it felt like I’d spent some more fleeting moments with her. More upsetting were the dreams where I knew she was dead in the real world, and in the dream she did too and I was just talking to her telling her how I missed her. Waking up would just take me away from her. If I were a spiritual person I’d feel comforted that maybe she was reaching out to me from beyond the grave, but unfortunately I know better and it’s my mind coming to terms with her death showing me what it thinks I want to see - or something like that. Odder were the ones where in the dream I saw her and was really upset knowing that when I woke up she’d be gone. I’d wake up with tears on my pillow but had left the sadness in the dream and didn’t feel upset at all.

The dreams started to fade away (although they do come back from time to time) and I found that my mind seemed to understand that she was gone. It was as though in the preceding years (and it took that long) my brain had been drip-feeding me little bits at a time rather than trying to get my head around the concept that my mother was gone all at once. It’s a good job I didn’t take it all in at once - because it’s such an utterly terrible thing to have to get used to and live with. I feel so bad for friends who lose parents because I know that it actually never gets any easier with time - you have to carry the pain and burden for the rest of your life. The only thing that changes is that you learn to live with it in your own way.

As I said at the start, not a day goes by that I don’t miss her. I still get upset from time to time but my mother was exactly the same decades after the death of her mother. She never hid the tears from us and as a result we were brought up knowing that it was perfectly normal to miss someone you loved and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

She wrote me a letter when she knew she wouldn’t make it and in it she told me she’s always admired my positive outlook on life and to make the most of life as it’s so precious. Every day that goes by that’s exactly what I try to do.

I had the pleasure of attending my good friend Steve’s wedding to his sweetheart Caroline at the weekend and it was lovely.

I was lucky enough to work with Steve in my first “proper” job (i.e. not for a University) and learned a great deal from him on both a personal and professional level. For anyone who’s ever heard me utter the words “phenomenal attention to detail”, you can thank Steve for drilling it into my head. His methodical approach to problem solving rubbed off on me and I continue to this day applying the same lessons I learned from him. Although I try to lose my temper and swear a bit less!

I remember when he first met Caroline. They were set up at a wedding they both attended and he came back beaming about what a lovely girl she was. And he pretty much carried on talking about her from that point until the day he moved in with her! When I first met her I was taken aback at firstly how damned attractive she was and secondly what a lovely girl she was - funny, intelligent, genuine, a real catch. Steve had clearly been doing something right!

However the best was yet to come. Having moved down south to be with her, every time I met up with them again it was plain to see the positive effect she was having on him. It’s rare to see two people who become so much more than the sum of their parts. And great guy though Steve was I realise now there was a part of him missing until he met Caroline. To see the story have a happy ending and be there as they were married was a real honour.

Oh yes, and it was a good excuse to finally buy myself a dinner suit and learn how to tie a bow tie properly. Trouble is, I can’t think of anybody else I know who’s likely to get married so it may be a while before I get to wear it again. Although you can wear dinner suits to christenings can’t you? (And before you ask, I don’t mean for me).

Several years after the low of living with me in Yorkshire my brother (right) has finally hit the big time. To be fair, things went really well after his ill-fated stay with me. He’s spent the past year or so living in Edinburgh and making the most of the rich and vibrant night-life. He got a great job that’s much more interesting than mine (i.e. it’s not writing software) and he’s been having a whale of a time.

He stayed with us this weekend for the last time because he’s moving to California. San Francisco to be precise. I’d normally say he’s a lucky git but to be honest he’s worked hard and deserves everything that’s coming to him. If I were a betting man I’d have said that I’d have been more likely to move to the centre of the software world before he would but it’s funny how life surprises you some times. And how settled I am living in Yorkshire!

For one thing, I’m going to miss him. He’s my brother and my best friend. Barely a few days go by that I don’t speak to him, so for him to be on the other side of the world seems a long way away. However with modern technology like Skype we’ll be able to talk just as much as we do now. It also means I now have a holiday destination for early next year. We did a California road trip a couple of years ago and loved it and I can’t wait to go back.

So to my younger brother Jamie, good luck, all the best and stay off the burgers!

Exactly 4 weeks from today I'm getting married.

The process of planning a wedding hasn't been exactly what I expected it to be. I knew there would be pressure and I was fully expecting to battle it all out with family members as to who was cut from the list. I knew that lots of people would be saying "well they invited you to their wedding 10 years ago so you should invite them" even though we'd not even spoken to them since.

But I was wrong. That part turned out to be pretty straightforward. What I wasn't prepared for was spending time thinking about the wedding and not about each other. I guess it's easy to forget that you have to work at relationships and you can't keep burying your head in the sand. If I'm honest I was starting to look at the wedding as a chore, a formality to get out of the way and everything would be fine once it was over and done with. But that's no way to approach a wedding.

After much soul searching and low points, we both realised that we'd stopped communicating, stopped spending the time together we should have, stopped doing the fun things we used to do and had slowly slipped into a rut. We were wondering if we should even carry on with the wedding at all. But once we realised what the problem was we picked ourselves up and starting doing things together rather than her watching TV, me going on the computer. We started being a couple again and we're much happier. Suddenly we both remembered why we wanted to get married in the first place!

When I was younger I always assumed that relationships between people who were meant to be together just worked. Everything clicked, things never went wrong and there were never any lows. But that's ridiculous (well certainly after the first couple of years - prior to that it's all a honeymoon period). All relationships have their ebbs and flows - when things are good they're great, but when things slip you start to notice all the flaws, all the negatives and can easily get consumed but it.

I remember watching a program about relationships a year or so ago. They had a young couple who'd just met, a couple about to get married, one that had been married a short while right up to a couple in their 70s who'd been married forever. What I found most interesting and endearing was the elderly couple. They said that the secret to their staying together so long and being happy together was that they knew that they had to work at their relationship and would have their ups and downs, but to always keep in mind what brought them together in the first place. They said that all too often these "young folk" hit hard times and gave up to easily - hence the high divorce rates these days. They may have been in their 70s but they were still young at heart with their outlook on life and sense of humour. And after all these years they were still very much in love - seeing photos of them when they met you could still see the sparkle in their eyes now. They were really lovely.

We know that once we're married we've still got to work at it, and if we stop doing that we'll end up right back in a rut again. So often couples come back from the high of a year of wedding planning, the perfect wedding day, an awesome honeymoon to the reality of their former lives. They're under the illusion that the rest of their lives will be like their wedding day, but of course that's not the case. As that elderly couple said, you've got to keep working at it!

But in the meantime, I've got a party in 4 weeks to look forward to! If you want to buy us a present from our wedding list, my good lady has put one up on Debenham's website - just search for my name!

I spent the weekend up in Scotland. Normally my girlfriend would go with me but she deserved a few days to herself so for the first time in a long time I got to spend some quality time with my father talking, taking photos and reminiscing. It was one of the nicest weekends I’ve had in a long time (and the sun was shining - something I haven’t seen in Yorkshire for a good while).

I’ve been thinking about time a lot lately. I look at my girlfriend and know that I want to spend the rest of my life with her. But I realise that much though I’d like to stop the clock and stay as we are forever, it ain’t gonna happen. Time will pass, we’ll age, get old and eventually die. It’s an inevitable aspect of life that I’m all too aware of but sometimes it saddens me. Youth is wasted on the young and wisdom is only earned by the old. Oh, to wind back the clock! Having said that, sunsets are the most beautiful parts of the day:

There’s no stopping the march of time, only making the most of it. The trouble is, most people don’t truly understand it until it’s too late.

The following poem used to hang on the wall of the bedroom I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I didn’t pay much attention to it despite my father reading it a few times to us. However I must have read it myself because without realising it Kipling’s words have been etched into my psyche and they’re just as relevant to me today as they were when they were written nearly a century ago. Technology changes the world but it doesn’t change the human spirit.

‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

Looks like I made it after all.

For many couples, there can be nothing more stressful than the female of the species suffering from monthly mood swings, hot flushes, irrational behaviour and did I mention mood swings? That would be PMT (Pre-Menstrual Tension). For us males it’s a time to show patience and support and ride the storm (it won’t last for ever). However, for most couples there’s something that is even worse. And that’s the sudden absence of the above. I’m referring of course to a missed period.

More often than not it’s harmless and nothing to worry about. The contraceptive pill can play havoc with the menstruation cycle and missing a pill can totally mess the cycle up altogether. A missed period can throw up all kinds of things that you don’t give a second thought to normally. Thoughts like: “I’m not ready to be a father”, “I’m too young to be a father”, “well there goes my fantasies of sleeping with other women - I’m going to have to get married” and of course “my life is over”. There may even be some positives but I’ll dwell on the negatives for now as it aids the narrative.

The first time this happened to me (well, to my then girlfriend of course) was when I was about 19 (making my girlfriend about 17). I was absolutely terrified. It’s one of the few memories I retain from being that age and I remember thinking things like “if it’s negative I’ll never have sex again so I never have to feel this scared again”. Fortunately it was a false-call and I quickly forgot the fear and blind panic.

But this month my girlfriend missed her period. And my reaction was not what I’d come to expect. First of all, I started joking about the whole thing. I’d send her text messages saying I was off to Mothercare to look at infant clothes. I ask her if any of her relatives had any prams / cots / sterilising equipment they didn’t need any more. Of course my dry wit soon made her a bit tense so she went off and bought a home pregnancy test. While she was away getting it I thought seriously for a moment about how I’d feel if she tested positive.

The Center Parcs pool

And you know what? I decided that I didn’t mind either way. We’ve spoken about having kids and how we’re knocking on a bit and if we’re going to start a family we want to be doing it soon. But we’d decided that - selfish as we still are - we’re just not ready to do it. And to be honest, we didn’t know when we ever would be. But we’d still love kids.

But it became clear to me while I was waiting that we aren’t going to be just wake up one morning and decide that we were ready. It would have to be forced on us and we’d have to deal with it and make the switch to putting ourselves second in our lives after our kids. And this could be it. This could be it being forced on us. And the scary part was that I wasn’t scared at all. I thought to myself “if she’s pregnant, then I’m going to be a father”. And I felt fine about that. I really did.

And as she took the test and came up negative, I swear to you I felt a pang of disappointment.

Maybe it’s because I’m rapidly approaching 30. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending time with my girlfriend’s family including two nephews (even the Easter weekend). Or maybe I’m coming to realise that there has to be more to life than this. Still, the test kit claims only 99% accuracy. Which means 1 in 100 results are wrong…