Jim and Carmels Adventures

  Chapter One Belfast to Paris   The dull grey skies of Belfast momentarily gave way as a beam of sunlight broke through the clouds when I boarded the ferry to Cairnryan.   Feelings of excitement mixed with nervous anticipation filled my senses. My journey had begun. I was determined that I wouldn’t fly at all. I had purchased an interrail pass covering me for 10 journeys over 2 months. I would travel overland by train and bus when necessary and by ferry when required. I was on this ferry just two years previously with Carmel by my side as we made our way to Ayr for a birthday party. Carmel and a friend had worked at a Butlins Holiday Camp there over 50 years previously. Her friend had met someone who worked there and had a fleeting romance with him. Unfortunately he was from “the wrong religion” and parental pressure would have proved too strong in those days so they drifted apart and like many similar types of liaisons at that time, they were thwarted by circums...

  Journey of Healing   Introduction I am classed as a widower. I was first labelled with that term when I went to register my late wife’s death. Somehow the shock of that term shook me to my core. I am now officially classified. Carmel left us after 41 years of marriage. 41 years of love and pain of happiness and turmoil of laughter and arguments. All the ingredients of a typical marriage. Yet she was my lover, my best friend, my confidant, my soul mate. I refuse to be defined at this stage in terms of a term like widowhood. That seems so final. We still are joined together in a special bond that surpasses grief and loss. She was and is someone who held a special bond in my heart even though she is physically gone. She is still there surrounding me, looking after me and our children and our grandchildren. Her passing was sudden and unexpected. The grief was thrust upon me its stabbing wound suddenly and surely piercing my heart with a pain that left me numb and traumatiz...