A widowed dad revealed he “can’t stop crying” after coming across an old email chain from his wife five years after she died.
Australian dad-of-two Chris Martin said he was “floored” when he discovered secret plans his late wife Renee had been making for his 40th – and a heartwarming message about what he meant to her.
Chris met Renee through her cousin, a friend of his, when they were in their early twenties but they got together several years later after sharing a kiss at a joint thirtieth for his brother and her cousin.
They spent seven and a half “glorious years” together and had two children, Grace and Albi, before Renee died from cancer at just 39.
After discovering the email, Chris took to his blog, Just A Dad , to explain how deeply it affected him and to thank her for “still helping me out after all these years.”
He said, “I haven’t cried in quite some time. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. Doesn’t really matter I guess, as long as I don’t bottle everything up and explode in spectacular fashion one day while at a school function or kid’s birthday party. But out of nowhere, tonight, I did. Well not nowhere exactly, but it was a sudden onset and totally out of left field.”
Chris said he was logged into Renee’s email looking for some information and found an email thread where his “usually un-sneaky wife (she couldn’t hide a secret for the life of her)” was planning his 40th birthday celebrations with his family.
He said he was skimming the contents when he found some “humbling and beautiful words she had written about me and what I meant to her.”
“It was as if I could hear her voice, something I haven’t heard for so long, in the words printed on the screen before me. And it floored me – in more ways than one.”
Chris went on to reveal the waves of emotion and guilt that the message prompted.
He said he felt “humbled by her endearing words and filled with the “same desperate sadness I remember so vividly after she passed.
“I immediately felt the dreadful hollowness of being alone, of never being able to have exactly what I once did, again. The tears flowed and I felt terrible guilt course through every fibre. Guilt that I hadn’t thought or felt these things for some time. Guilt that I had seemingly forgone these feelings in the pursuit of normality and, dare I say it, happiness. Guilt that I wasn’t upset until I read the words. Guilt that I’m here and not her. Guilt that I couldn’t fix her. Now I know that grief is a journey without end, and that the journey is as different for every individual just as there are no two snowflakes the same. But there are commonalities in everyone’s journey, and guilt is definitely one of them. And it’s a tricky b*****d this guilty feeling. Ill-definable, sporadic and hard to articulate without sounding like a pessimistic child, it is one of the few feelings that hit hard and fast, and leave you stunned and questioning everything. It has a cunning ability to dredge up every thought or decision you’ve made in the past and often lingers long after the initial anxiety has past. And it provides no answers, just more questions. It’s basically just f****d. And like everything else in life, it too passes, albeit slowly sometimes. But it serves as a reminder – like a hammer to my kneecap type reminder, that there is more to losing a loved one than the anticipated sadness, loneliness and longing. That there are no answers, no solutions or no ways to manipulate the grief journey.
It just has to happen. However it pans out, I just have to trust that I’ll be ok. For now, however, in a weird kinda way I’m glad it happened. It’s comforting to know I still care. It feels good to connect with deep emotions, to acknowledge things I perhaps have ignored lately in lieu of more superficial pursuits. And contrary to popular belief, guys do like a good old sob every now and then, even if they don’t admit it. It’s cleansing. Healing.
Normal. Even writing this all down has been cathartic and I feel lighter already. So I guess I should say thanks Renee, still helping me out after all these years. Bless.”
The Sun
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