The First Last Kiss (47 page)

And Ryan pulls back from my lips and looks into my eyes, a little twinkle forming in them like stars coming out when the sun is still up in the sky.

‘That oughta do the trick huh, Moll?’ he says, and I start laughing. And then he raises me back up and we kiss and hug. But suddenly Ryan goes stiff and slowly turns his head as someone pats him on the shoulder.

‘Hey, loving your PDA, dude! It’s almost as good as mine!’ And Tom grins, his face looming towards us as he murmurs quietly and then sweeps on by with his minders, leaving only the memory of his words and his smile as Ryan and I look at each other. Both sets of our eyes are now bulging out of our heads and we burst out laughing.

In the cinema we take our seats and I slip my hand – which is still shaking after our close encounter with Tom Cruise – into Ryan’s, and settle back to enjoy the film. But five minutes in he leans over and whispers, ‘Can we go home, Molly? I don’t think . . . I don’t think I’m feeling very good.’

That night I put him to bed and I lie there until his breathing becomes heavy and regular. I lie there holding him for as long as possible, willing sleep to come for me, too. But I can’t. I slip out of bed and I go to the lounge, crying more the further away I get from Ryan. I’m crying because I know what I’m doing isn’t stopping anything. We are doing all these amazing things we’ve always dreamed of, but it’s not enough. I sit on the sofa and it is then that I see a piece of paper that is propped up on the coffee table by the flamingo. The bloody flamingo. He’s found it then. My list. The Fuck It List. He must have seen it before we went out tonight.

I reach out to take my list to see if he’s added anything to it. I glance down the page in confusion, and disbelief. The heading and every single thing on it has been crossed off.

Underneath he’s written a new list:

Ryan’s
To Be
List

I want
to be
with you

I want
to be
with my family and friends

I don’t want
to be
mollycoddled!!!!

I want
to be
able to live life as normally as possible with you

I don’t want you
to be
constantly beating yourself up or feeling guilty for things you can’t change and that I wouldn’t even want to change

I want
to be
able to take time to look back on my life, not try to cram in any more.

I want you
to be
able to see what I feel: that I’m a man completely fulfilled. I have everything I ever wanted, Molly, and I don’t regret anything. Not a thing

And then, this:

I don’t want to DO any more, Molly, I just want
to be

I bite my lip as I read his list, nodding and sobbing as I take in what he is trying to tell me. I’ve just been blindly forging ahead, trying to do things that will make me feel better about Ryan dying, not him. Because I’m not ready for him to die. He may be, but I’m not. I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.

His handwriting blurs before my eyes and I start seeing double, then I realize that it’s the writing from the other side of the thin A4 notepaper showing through. I don’t remember writing anything on that side. I turn it over and that is when I begin to really sob, because on it Ryan has written another list. One just for me. I read each line slowly, trying to commit each one to memory, stroking his scrawly, spiky, handwriting with my fingers.

Molly’s
To Be
List

I want you
to be
happy!

I want you to be positive!

I want you
to be
able to look back without any regrets!

I want you u able to let go of the past and live in the moment!

I want you
to be
a photographer. You are brilliant at it. Why have you stopped taking photos? I may have cancer but you still have your eyes, and your hands, and most importantly, your vision

I want you
to be
loved. Whoever loves you next, will love you forever. Because it will be impossible not to. Believe me, I know. And if I were still here I’d shake his hand, because I know how lucky he is

I want you to be a mum. You will be properly awesome at it. And no, Moll, I don’t regret us not having children. It would kill me (ho ho!) to know I was leaving them behind. I am glad it was just me and you, Moll, do you hear me? I mean it

I want you
to be
proud of the woman you are and to know that I was so proud to be loved by you. You made my life complete, that’s why I don’t care about not getting old. We had it all so young, didn’t we? I had it all so young. And what man could ask for more?

I finally have a list of stuff that actually matters. The only list that will ever matter to me again. I kiss the piece of paper, brushing my lips over his handwriting, trying to inhale his words and sentiment, to swallow the love that he’s written this list with. This here, is Ryan, a man who has never wanted anything more than what’s he’s got, who’s lived a full life by living simply. He has always had his priorities right, not just now, when facing death, but his whole life. He’s never chased ridiculous dreams or put emphasis on anything other than being a good friend, son, brother, boyfriend, teacher and husband. I’ve learned so much from him but he is still teaching me. And I know he’ll be teaching me for a long time to come.

I put the piece of paper down on the coffee table and go into the kitchen and switch on the kettle, I know sleep is not coming for me tonight. As I lean against the wall, looking around our flat, our home, I start constructing something in my head. Words, then sentences, then a paragraph.

I carry my tea out to the lounge, get my laptop and tap into my blog account. My fingers hover over the keys as I sit and stare at the blank screen, unused to pouring my feelings into anything other than a photo. Then I open the folder on my laptop marked ‘Wedding’ and flick through all the photos on there until I come to the one I want. It is of Ryan and me, standing under the canopy of sunset-red, orange and yellow wild flowers that I’d chosen, the sun was about to dip into the sea behind us and we stood, me in white, him in pale blue, like we’re the eye of a fire. Our heads are tilted towards each other, smiling lips pressed against each other, hands clasped to each other’s cheeks, sharing our first kiss as man and wife. I stare at it for a moment and then I write. I pause and underline it.

The ’Til Death Do Us Part Kiss

For a girl who never thought she believed in marriage, once I came around to the idea I wondered what the hell had held me back for so long. All this time I’d been afraid of the permanence of the institution, the finality, the absolution.

One person for the rest of your life.

Now I know that this isn’t always possible.

I look at the wedding photo again, take a sip of my tea and then continue typing, the words flooding out of my fingers.

Because after finally finding my ‘happy ever after’ I have recently found out that my gorgeous, athletic, funny, kind, caring, fitness-and football-fanatic husband, has terminal cancer. He’s nearly 30 and I’m 28. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers; we had our first kiss when I was 15 and he was 17 in a bar called The Grand (it was disastrous); we had our second (incredible) kiss in our early twenties, after bumping into each other on holiday in Ibiza (I think he stalked me, he still denies this!). We moved in together when all our friends were having one-night stands, but then split up temporarily, only to realize that we belonged together. We got engaged in New York, in Central Park, by the Imagine Memorial in Strawberry Fields on 23rd November 2005 (my 26th birthday). It was an utterly magical moment. Then we got married, in Ibiza on 22nd April 2006, and it was completely out of this world. I feel like I have loved him for forever, and because of that, I foolishly thought we still had forever.

Since his diagnosis I’ve been consumed by the need to make every single moment count, to try and make what is left of Ryan’s life worthwhile. I’ve even written a to-do list, a way of making sure Ryan has done everything he’s ever dreamed of. My colleagues have kindly helped me to arrange some incredible experiences for Ryan, which we’ve been slowly working our way through, but I’ve just found a list that he has written for me. Not a To Do List, but a
To Be
List. He’s pointed out that there is nothing that he would do differently, that his life has been full because of the choices he has made, the incredible friends he has, his amazing family who he has always been enviably close to, his teaching job which he loves. His students are like his own kids; he nurtures them, gives them unequivocal time, patience and understanding when no one else has. He’s never desired more than he has. He’s always been happy, sometimes annoyingly so (have you ever tried arguing with someone who is smiling? It’s infuriating!) And that all he wants from now on is to be with those he loves. To be, not do.

His mum, Jackie, always jokes that he was born smiling. Now
he
jokes that he will die smiling too. You’ve got to laugh, I guess. And we do, but sometimes I find it really hard.

I have spent hours wishing that I could find a way to hold on to Ryan forever, and right now, it feels like this blog is it. For the past few months you’ve shared my view of life and love through a camera lens; on my trip to New York, my walks to work, all the places Ryan and I have been. Since he was diagnosed I’ve been putting up some photos of Ryan and me.

I guess it’s because I want other people to share the greatest love I have ever, will ever, know. I wish I could have captured every single kiss that Ryan and I have shared and post them here so you could see how much I have had by having Ryan, and who I have become by being with him. I wish that all of you would go and kiss your loved ones right now and savour it – and savour every one that follows it. Because when you know that those kisses are finite, that each one you share is bringing you closer to goodbye, you’ll wonder why you wasted so many. So please, for me, take Ryan’s life advice, stop doing and start
being
. Be kind to each other, be grateful for each other, be true to each other. Don’t throw away your kisses, not a single one. The future isn’t promised to any of us, so kiss till you can’t kiss any more, on the street, in front of everyone! Kiss as if each one were the last. And then save them to your memory so you can cherish them forever. Just like I’m doing.

Molly xx

The Uncontrollable Kiss

Have you ever given yourself to a kiss so completely, so indisputably, that you felt like you surrendered some of yourself and replaced it with a part of them? It happened when I came back from Ibiza. With that kiss, Ryan triggered my metamorphosis into a butterfly. Socially, physically and psychologically. He’d breathed new life into me, caressed my soul with his lips. And I couldn’t go back into my cocoon. Not now, not with him, not ever.

<

‘God, that felt like the longest Monday ever,’ Jo sighs as a group of us huddle into the lift just after 6 p.m. ‘I hate press week. No matter how organized we are, it always ends up being totally stressful. I need a drink. Anyone going to join me?’

I glance at my watch – all I really want to do is get settled into my new flat, pour a glass of wine and unpack some boxes.

‘Oh, come on,’ badgers Jo, as the lift doors open into the yawning reception of Brooks Inc,
Viva
’s publishing company. ‘I want to hear more about this holiday romance . . . ’

I ignore her. I really don’t want to talk about Ryan any more. I’m pretty sure I won’t hear from him again. Once a player . . .

The revolving doors spit us out one by one and into Long Acre, the main thoroughfare into Covent Garden that’s absolutely heaving on this balmy July evening. We stand chatting for a couple of minutes, trying to work out which bar to go to, finally settling on The Langley, which is just round the corner.

‘MOLLY!’ I hear a distant shout and turn around quickly, unsure where it came from and if it was directed at me. The early evening sunshine bounces off the glass of the store windows, blinding me temporarily, and we are suddenly swallowed up by hordes of people who are swarming out of the tube station. All I can see is a mass of heads.

‘Did you just hear that or am I going mad?’ I ask Jo.

‘I heard it,’ she affirms.

‘MOLLY!’ I swivel around again and this time I see the biggest bouquet of flowers crossing the road, causing the crowds to part and cars to magically screech to a halt. Even black cabs. The person who appears to have a bouquet of flowers in place of a head is dodging across the road and shouting like it’s a matter of life of death.

‘Sorry, excuse me . . . I’ve just got to . . . MOLLY!’

I hear the girls gasp and my jaw drops open as Ryan appears before me, grinning widely and panting. Little beads of perspiration have formed on his tanned brow, his arms, totally exposed in a blue T-shirt with a red hooded puffa warmer over the top are pumped with exertion, and his blue eyes are shimmering like the sea we swam in together in Ibiza.

‘Ryan? What on earth are you doing here? You’re meant to still be in Ibiza!’ I say, holding my hand over my eyes to shade them from the still-bright sun. I can’t believe he’s standing here before me like a mirage, bathed in the soft yellow late-evening light. He looks almost angelic with this aura of light around him.

He looks at the group of magazine girls gathered around me, who are all visibly swooning, and he holds out the flowers to me.

‘I just couldn’t get through another day without seeing you,’ he says. ‘I cut my holiday short and caught the next flight home, shortly after you.’

I stare at him in shock, studying his face for signs of this being a joke. I look around to see if I can see Alex, or Carl, or any of the other lads with him.