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Comment by Michael Lovelidge on May 13, 2018 at 2:01pm

My eulogy to my wife of 40 years and 1 day.

I want to talk about love.
Some people hear the words "love at first sight" and think it's a nice romantic notion, a Disney like thing that has no reality in this world.

It happened to me, I saw Elizabeth when we were 18, we married at 19 and I chose to join her in building a family, Elizabeth had strong views and had already decided to start her family by making Nicola.
If you could have seen the love and witnessed it you would have known it to be real and that’s the reason most of my family are here.

We were young fiery and passionate, the first year of marriage with Elizabeth I think we got through 20 years of arguments but I or she would always run after the one who left, we were young, we would say sorry and “I love you” and it would be all right until the next world changing happening which shapes two young lives moving closer and becoming one.

From when we first met, my greatest joy was watching her move, she would make taffeta skirts and we would go to dances with my cousin Janise, I didn’t mind, not always dancing with her so long as I could watch her move. I loved watching her move.

We would be listening to the radio and she would suddenly jump up and start dancing, I would push the chair away from the screen lean back and watch her... sometimes even join in.

Elizabeth loved her children, she loved her family she sometimes expressed this by knitting jumpers for them, a skill I always admired with awe. She would sit and cover her fingers in talcom powder the smell would fill the house and I would know someone was getting loved.
She spent months knitting and I had to sit through many episodes of "Mid summer murders" you see she wanted to have a shawl prepared to welcome the arrival of our granddaughter Margaret she didn’t quite make it but with the help of Sue, Alex's mother the shawl was completed.

I am almost at the end now.
I know I will never see her move again, my heart is broken and my soul-mate gone but before I finnish there's a poem by W H Auden which sums up how I feel and I'd like to read for you now.

Stop the clocks, cut off the phones,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message she Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic cops wear black cotton gloves.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.