Letters from REAVEN

Victoria Keenan’ Siusband left a surprise legacy

- FIONA FORD, EMILY PHILLIPS.

There’s a photo on my phone of me and my husband Nick, shortly after we’d started dating. Our smiling faces remind me of a time when things were so simple, when all we had to worry about was what we’d have for dinner that night or where we should go on holiday that summer. Some mornings when I’m up early and the house is still silent, I yearn for those times. I miss the woman in that photo – carefree, happy and completely ignorant of some of the awful things life can throw your way. But more so, I miss the man in the photo. I miss the way he looked at me, the warm touch of his skin, the sound of his heart beating as I lay my head on his chest in bed.

Nick and I had met in 2014 after being set up by a mutual friend. It sounds like a cliché but I knew he was The One from the start – he was so kind and easy to be around. We got engaged in 2015 and we enjoyed making plans for our future. But soon after, Nick started complaining about pins and needles running up and down his arm. We didn’t think much of it until June 2015 when it turned to a constant shooting pain. He saw the GP and was immediately sent to St George’s Hospital, London. I met Nick there and a doctor guided me into his consulting room. My heart started pounding when I saw Nick sitting on the edge of the bed in tears.

He had a tennis-ball-sized tumour on the left side of his brain, in the middle of his frontal lobe. It was slow growing and it was terminal, although we had no idea at that stage how long he had left.