A few months ago, a friend asked me if I was thinking of doing anything special to mark the 10 years of my husband Rob’s death anniversary at the end of May. The question felt like a jolt. On some level, I knew it was 10 years, but I hadn’t actively been thinking about it.

A couple of years ago, I read Cariad Lloyd’s book You Are Not Alone, a guide to help people through the process of grieving. It charts Cariad’s loss of her own father, but one chapter that stood out to me was about significant markers of time – when you pass the 10-year mark, then the 20-year mark. These seemed like such long periods of time, and I asked myself how I might feel when I reached the 10-year anniversary of my husband Rob’s death by suicide. Would I would feel worse, or more removed from it?

With my friend’s words echoing in my ears, I thought about putting on some kind of event that would help to raise money for suicide prevention charity CALM. I asked my sister if I could maybe spend the day with her, because perhaps I shouldn’t be alone. And then I realised that I couldn’t do any of that. That 10 years is an arbitrary number. It is us little old humans trying to yet again instill some sense of order onto grief, when anyone who has experienced deep grief will know that it does not behave according to order and rules.

The death anniversary for me is such precise evidence of that. I didn’t know how I would........

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