FOR EVER LOVES

A little while ago, I heard of the death of an ex- of mine. We hadn't been in touch for a couple of decades and we had both, as they say, moved on. Nor was he a constant in my thoughts: there were no unanswered questions. In other words, no big deal in the internal life of my 70s.

However, the fact of his death gave me pause. He was the first person of my peer group for whom my abiding memory was largely visceral - both in lust and in fury - and though both sets of emotions were consigned to the past, their power had eroded other memories. Surprising therefore to find that his death found him residing in a calm, though sad, place inside me. Several years of turmoil and recovery were replaced with a rueful smile. We may not have been good for each other, but we had travelled some of our journey together and affected each other deeply. His death seems to have stripped away the neurotic parts of the story and left me valuing the love, the effort and the learnings of our time together. I don't think I am papering over the cracks. Some of our relationship bordered on the crazy - but it seems that is not what matters in the end.

I say all this because I am conscious that many of my friends in couples are dreading the loss of their life partners, regardless of whether theirs is a first or second marriage. They have been long enough together to know that they will lose each other to death now, not divorce.

I don't know why intimate relationships are not treated with greater reverence in our western culture. Long term sexual relationships, even if physically less active in later years, hold the possibility of a union that changes both people. I am not talking here about sex as physical release or sex as play (though both may be part of the whole), but of sex as a language to get to know another human being as deeply as it is possible to know someone: sex as a merging of body and spirit that feels like experiencing the Divine; sex as We Are One.

So I am not surprised that older couples begin to discern that the loss of the other will be less like a bereavement and more like an amputation. No wonder there is dread. People I know who've gone through it will sometimes admit that they would rather not be around any more. By and large, that is not OK with others - particularly offspring who would like Mum or Dad to carry on, pick themselves up and take up a hobby or a pet.

But here I return to earlier observations. Although not of the same order as a life-long relationship, I note that the person you've loved ends up living in a place inside you which is yours alone. No-one can touch it, and no-one can take it away. Yes, it will be agony. No, you probably won't get over it. But love and death both have a way of being transformative. With some temerity, because it won't be my story, I echo Edith Sitwell's "Love is not changed by death, and nothing is lost, and all in the end is harvest." You don''t know until they've gone how much they will be with you for ever.