I was planning to write my next blog post about popular histories of returning British ex-servicemen, comparing Adam Powell’s Soldiering On and Simon Fowler and Daniel Weinbren’s Now the War is Over. At some point I will write this post, as there is a lot I want to say about the multiplicity of such books, what makes a book on a historical topic a ‘history’ and the challenges I am facing in trying to write The Return of the Soldier as something other than an academic monograph.

But…

Last week my husband was rushed into hospital. Since then, he has spent two days on the ICU in an induced coma and, while he is now conscious and on a ward, he is still very ill and will be in hospital for the foreseeable future.

It has, as you might imagine, been a surreal and often terrifying week for me and our two children. All our networks – family, neighbours, school friends, university friends, colleagues, the children’s choir – have mobilised to support us. People have offered to fly across the world to come to our aid. A network of medical professionals stretching from New Zealand to Colorado have been on call to provide expert advice at any hour of the day or night. We have been fed cheese and chocolate and tea, offered beds for night, provided with distractions, hugs and words of support.

We try, as far as possible, to carry on as normal in the knowledge that the NHS, always at its best in a crisis, is doing its utmost and keeping our husband and father safe. My son has spent three nights under canvas in the rain-sodden Lakes, doing his Duke of Edinburgh Gold practice expedition. My daughter has baked Mini Egg cookies. Piano has and will be played, hymns and anthems sung in Holy Week services. Life around us goes on, so it must, at some level, for us as well. I cannot let this derail my son’s aspirations for university, my daughter’s vital friendship groups.

But…

While I continue to survive and function at some level day to day, doing laundry, cleaning the house, organising the children so that they are where they need to be right now, ensuring that the hens are alive and well cared for, as far as work is concerned, I find myself in a place of suspended animation. With a few exceptions, all of which can remain in abeyance for the next few weeks, I have requested extensions for all project deadlines. My sample chapter of The Return of the Soldier and my messy first draft of the first chapter of Men and War remain half typed and three-quarters written respectively. Alwyn Turner’s A Shell-Shocked Nation, the next on my reading list, remains unread. I will get back to this work soon; there is part of me that is desperate to do so, to think about something beyond my own and my family’s immediate survival. But for the moment, all of this must wait.

As difficult as this week has been, its saving grace has been the knowledge it has brought me of how lucky I am. Six or seven years ago, three acquaintances of my generation lost their male partners within a twelve-month period, two to suicide, one to sudden illness. All had young children; all faced the challenges of a future shaped by profound loss with a grace and resilience I can only aspire to knowing that, however ill he is, my husband is alive and that is a gift.

So too is my children’s resilience and maturity in the face of this crisis. I would not have chosen to have the fact that my husband and I have managed to be ‘good enough’ parents demonstrated to me in this manner, but given that it has been, I am glad it is the case.

And as for those networks, that web of supportive relationships that is our safety net in the moment of freefall, the only words I have are not mine, but those of Dar Williams: ‘I’ll act like I have faith, and like that faith never ends/ But I really just have friends.’

There will be more blog posts in the near future. Writing this post has shown me that writing is going to help me to survive. In the meantime, we go on.