In my other life, I'm a medical writer, and I sometimes travel to for work. A few months after Tim died I went to Germany to write a report on a meeting. Whenever I went away, I'd always tell Tim that I was heading off to spend time with my people – doctors, scientists, researchers – and going to the conference was a little slice of normality after his death turned my life upside down. I love flying and the excitement of the journey kept me going, but arriving at the hotel brought me back down with a bump, as we'd message when I arrived safely and I'd send him pictures of the hotel room and the view out of the window. The conference went well, and I found moments of happiness talking about the science that I love. The journey home was hard, with a long delay in a late-night European airport, but a fellow widow kept me going by chatting on Messenger, and for that I'm still grateful.

Four and a half years on and I'm going to Grenoble to chair a panel at a medical devices conference, and my journey starts in Hope, at a rural railway station in the dawn light. I am living a whole new life – before I left I kissed my new wife and my new puppy goodbye – but I still carry Tim with me as I head out to see my people.

Sometimes I feel that I'm living two parallel lives. There's the life that changed abruptly when Tim died, and the other that carried on, where we are still married and he is still in his bookshop downstairs. 

Warning. Some sweariness.

One of the first, and wisest, things someone told me about the impact of bereavement is that it is three-fold. We lose our past, our present and our future. This helped me a lot. However, I wasn’t prepared for how much the death of a partner changes us. How much we become different people.

Grief rewires our brains. This rewiring may be temporary, as we go through the fog that is widow’s brain. Some of the changes may also be long-term, or even permanent. For example, bereavement can lead to heightened anxiety, where everything seems like a threat or a potential catastrophe. I am actually less anxious about myself after bereavement, because I realised that I dealt with the worst thing that could ever happen, and I survived. I have more confidence in myself (well, most of the time), because I rebuilt my life on my own. However, I do worry about other people, and I no longer believe in the permanence of anything.

I think it now takes me longer to accept change, as there have been some many changes in my life. I am more patient with other people and their pain and sadness. But I have lost the ability to tolerate fools gladly (not that I was ever that good at it before Tim died). To quote Hank Green, “Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren.”

All of this doesn’t mean that you will never be happy again. Your sadness day to day will lessen. You will feel less angry. You will find yourself smiling or laughing at things. You will go out with friends or go to a party and have fun. Your grief will remain part of you – mine does – but you will start moving forward.

I am happy – not the kind of happy that I expected. After all, one version of my future was taken away from me when Tim died. But I am a different kind of happy in a new version of the future.