Love

I never knew anything about love as a child. At the time of meeting Karen through work, I was just like a crazy mixed up young man, with no dress sense and hair like a mop who just wanted to fight everything and everyone.

Karen taught me love, tenderness, compassion, so many things - gave me confidence and self-belief. Karen didn’t make it, brain tumour, aged 29 on 16 September 1990, when she went, well part of me died to. What was Karen to me, well a sister, best friend, confidant and self-appointed cheerleader on my behalf. Before Karen, no one ever believed in me, thought I could do anything, just shouted at me, looked at me as if I was nothing, laughed when I said I wanted to know about something.

Karen made me a cup of tea on my first day at work, no one had ever done that before that I could remember, I was 25. It was a simple gesture but it was something to me. Karen was very pretty, er, I wasn't. Karen had freckles, strawberry blonde hair and a lovely smile (with the illness the smile was sometimes a little crooked). Not that it mattered what Karen looked like, she captured my heart and made me feel special for the first time in my life. I will always be grateful for that. Even on the darkest day the sun shone when Karen was around.

All I ever wanted to do was to make Karen the happiest girl in the world, if that meant just being there to help her at work, to hold her hand when the tumour made her wobbly or sick, going to the shops to buy a tin of paint then that was enough. Everything I did for her was always a pleasure, no matter how small or mundane.

Karen once said to me that 'she wasn't a very honest person' but that in my mind made her an incredibly honest person, because to admit to that is to face a challenge that we must all meet in our dealings with others.

I really wish Karen was here now.