No time for tripping up

With the trek just eight days away, I've got a full-on schedule. Long walks have been off the menu for a couple of weeks since I strained a thigh muscle. I'm glad to say that's healed now but there are still final bits to get for my first aid kit and the final attempt at packing to make sure I can get everything in. The first attempt was dire and resulted in a few 'unnecessary' things getting the chop, like the newly-bought travel pillow. As it turns out, lots of us in the group are ditching them and someone suggested just taking a pillowcase and stuffing it with clothes. Genius!

Another genius idea is to take binoculars so you can pretend to be looking at the view when actually you're just stopping to catch a breath when we're climbing up the mountain.

I'm loving this group of ladies. We'll pull each other through with humour, I'm sure of that.

Which leaves me a bit phased as to why today I'm a bit tearful and reluctant to get out of bed and get dressed. I'm usually up at 5am... so what's all this 9am malarkey? 

On Tuesday, it'll be three years since Tim passed away. And I'm learning that things are always harder at this time. No matter how hard I try to forget the date, memories resurface, poisoning dreams, jolting me awake. People told me it would get easier. And in many ways it has. But it's at times like this that I reach for him when I'm wavering between sleep and wakefulness; when the phone rings and my heart lurches, thinking it might be him. Yes, it does get easier, but only in that you learn to live around it. You learn to live with the feeling that there's something missing - something irreplaceable. You learn to live with the realisation that the person you've spent most of your life with is gone and there's no possible way of getting him back.

So, it's time to pick myself up and get on with the day. It's time to remember how lucky I am that he chose me to spend his life with. And it's time to try to get a hundred and one things into a very small duffel bag.

*The photo was taken when I was eighteen and Tim was nineteen. I think it was his white socks that I fell for!

Jane Lomas is fundraising for The Brain Tumour Charity (justgiving.com)