I am happy to introduce our first guest blogger.  Rhi and I met in blogland, but have had the honor of truly becoming real friends.  She and her husband, along with me and mine, hope to become even better friends next week as we hunker down in their home in Wales to talk and laugh and drink british ale and get to know each other better.  I am thrilled that she agreed to share a bit of their very real and raw love story here.

rhi-and-danmy name is rhian, i am mostly known as rhi, sometimes cooksey. i am an unemployed graduate with grand dreams of living as a struggling artist. i am pretty good at the struggling, but still practicing the art bit.  i like to read and write, i like to walk barefoot in grass, and i like strawberry soya milkshakes.  i have been married for nearly 6 years to an often wonderful geekboy. and it has been hard.  but we still laugh at each others jokes, he warms my feet when they are cold, i bake him cupcakes frequently, and enable him to leave the house with at least one stray cotton thread on his self. i have a blog that is much abused with youtube videos, random journal pages, and daily ponderings.

This is just a small, highly edited and censored part of my story. One half of how a baby marriage of less than one year has struggled and fought and kicked and screamed its way to regain some sense of normality. To regain some feeling of love and security amidst a time of grief and loss.  And how freshly tweezed eyebrows may be the key to it all.

*****

“Do you pluck your eyebrows yourself or go to a shop?”
The shiny blue Peugeot, big enough to fit an entire drum kit in the boot, sped down the wide open B-road.  It drove down unlit territory on an empty road.

“Uh - myself.” I replied with a mixture of complete embarrassment and horror.

Why on earth would he ask that? Isn’t that some kind of sacred ground that should never be crossed by them; that other, unobservant species more akin to caveman than gentleman.

“They’re really nice.”

The air in the car seemed to take on a golden glow. The pitch black sky blurring by overhead seemed to grow a little bigger, the stars shone a little brighter, and my face grew a lot redder.

Fancy he picked my eyebrows as his target for the first compliment he would pay me!

I mean, the half whispered in nervousness, “I think I like you”, didn’t really count as a compliment. Lots of people liked me. My mum liked me. My brothers sometimes liked me. That boy who took me on a date the week before probably more than liked me. Or, something.

But my eyebrows. That was something special. That was actually quite tangible. And it was one of the many areas I always felt most self conscious of in my 18 year-old self’s body.

I suddenly felt very sure that this boy was terrifically special. He had unknowingly tapped into the one facial feature I had complete control over, and often had spent copious hours worrying over. Were they too bushy? Did they have enough shape? Were they lopsided? Lopsided is not a look I was going for.

Traveling down that unlit expanse of tarmac, empty of any other car to race or be compared too, the world felt a little more exciting.

A little more terrifying.

*FLASH*

We haven’t got time to stop for a Burger King. Why doesn’t he realize this?
As the panic sat in my stomach, and felt like it burned a hole in my heart, I tried to persuade myself to stay calm. To breathe. To not stress him out. Everybody needs to eat.
I will remember that drive home forever. Having talked to my dad just hours earlier, and having been informed that my brother had been taken to hospital, the already planned journey had taken on a new feel. It was no longer carefree and enjoyable. It had become a race to get somewhere as quickly as possible, to get to that safe place where our pictures hung on the walls, and where I could pretend that everything would be okay. Because it always was okay in the end. Always.

That was three days before my brother would die. Three days before I would lose him, and parts of myself forever. Three days before the world turned dark and my heart would be shattered into a thousand pieces. Before I would sit at my dark mahogany family dining table, and sob into my hands. Three days before my marriage would alter inconceivably, and before the memory of a nighttime Burger King pit stop would make me despise my own husband.

Death is something we are all aware of, yet something we all blissfully ignore on a daily basis. Until it creeps in and takes you by surprise.

I am quite certain there can never be a preparation for the overwhelming shock of losing someone. Its as if all the air is sucked out of your world, your lungs struggle to do the job they were created for, your head feels as though it might burst any minute with the incomprehensible idea of never seeing that person again. The world has shrunk, and you have no space or time for the things that came Before. Your life becomes a battle-ground to complete the most menial of tasks. Getting up. Brushing your teeth. Showering.

Time is split into Before and After.
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEDNESDAY . . .