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Reading – Emma Louise

I was going to just download something from the internet to read out, but there is nothing that can quite explain what my life with Emma was like, so I have tried to write something myself…

Me and Emma were always taking the mick out of each other. We would purposely wind each other up endlessly. We would bicker about anything and everything. But that’s what made us work, our ability to not take each other too seriously.

I first met Emma in early 2005 in Chicago Rock in Redditch Town Centre. We got chatting and I asked her out to go for a drink the following day. I treated her to a coke at The Litten Tree and we just talked like we had been best friends for years. I would say that she was easy to talk to, but I could barely get a word in, this set the tone for the next 16 years.

After a few months and being the romantic I am, I asked Emma to meet me at Lodge Park Social Club for a game of darts and pool. Having waited on my own at the bar for 30 minutes, I thought she’d either had a better offer or was lost. I gave her a ring and she kept saying that she was there outside waiting for me. After walking around the Lodge Park looking for her, it turned out that she was at a completely different pub! This was the day that I fell in love with her.

We moved in together in September 2005 and we got married in April 2006. When we got engaged at 23, a lot of people said you’re mad, you’re too young and it wouldn’t last. But we knew better and it made us more determined to prove people wrong.

I should have known what I was getting myself into during the start of a weekend break to Blackpool in October 2005, our first holiday together. I was tired so Emma was driving the first leg and I was going to drive the second leg in her “little green pea” as we called it.

I was fast asleep in the passenger side when Emma woke me up at a service station. We got out of the car to go for a toilet break and headed into the service station. That’s when I saw a “you are here” type map on the wall. We were at Michaelwood Service Station – near Bristol! “Whoops”, she said, I must have taken a wrong turning. “Yes” I said, you went M5 South instead of M6 North!

So, I had to take over the driving and instead of sharing a 150-mile trip, I now had to drive 250 miles in a Peugeot 106 which was not the most comfortable of journeys!

This trip was when I asked Emma to marry me at the end of Blackpool’s North pier.

Our married years were tinged with sadness and health problems for both of us. We were told it was highly unlikely that we would ever have kids after Emma suffered a ruptured ectopic pregnancy in February 2007. However, after 8 years of trying, our little miracle baby came along. Connor was perfect in every way. Emma was so happy and took naturally to motherhood, she was a great Mom to Connor and took great pride in showing him off whenever she could!


There is so much I’m going to miss about Emma that I could never list them all. But here are a few things I will miss…

I will miss your “Emma-isms”, like River Fames instead of River Thames.

Col-in-nul instead of Ker-nil.

Musher-rooms instead of mushrooms.

I will miss telling everyone on Facebook your latest question, like when we were watching something on the news about Russia and they mentioned the Kremlin and you responded with “Kremlin? I thought it was Gremlin?”

I will miss your geography, like when we first went to my uncle Pete’s and you asked if Spain was by Russia – or going to Bristol instead of Blackpool!

I will miss the days out with Alice, John and Thea, like Halloween when having your green screen photo taken and you fell off the hay bale backwards, just as the photo was being taken.

I will miss the endless selfies and annoying you by refusing to smile.

I will miss you leaving me in various shop car parks for hours on end.

I will miss you telling me the same story about your Mom and Dad getting married every time we drove through Kings Norton.

I will miss having to drive past your Nan’s old house every time we drove near Kings Norton!

I will miss you being a brilliant Mom to Connor.

But most of all, I will miss you, forever.

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