Music, Moments and Magic: When Love, Loss & Disco Balls Combine
Sometimes in life there are moments so phenomenally poetic and profound that they completely stop you in your tracks. You can’t smile, you can’t laugh, you can’t even cry, you are just that paralysed by the beauty of it all. If you are fortunate enough to be sharing it with someone, you can only stare at one other, your eyes saying everything as they lock together. Your mouths open, your heads spinning in unison.
Warren and I shared one of these life-affirming moments at the very end of our magical wedding celebrations in Ibiza last year.
Ibiza serves up these kinds of moments in droves; the spiritual connections you share on dancefloors, when a forgotten tune comes on, the mesmerising lights, the ice cannons, the confetti, the sheer love and joy enveloping it all. And don’t get me started on the sunsets. These are lifelong memories, made to be shared. When they’re over you immediately feel a wistful nostalgia for them, a bittersweet feeling of having had them whilst knowing they can never be truly replicated. Of course, there are always more to be made but that precise one is time stamped into your brain and changes your heart a little forever. For the better.
Remarrying after being widowed is an event full of the most overwhelming emotions. Feeling that unparalleled joy, while remembering the one who was lost for you to be here feels like the tightest squeeze of your heart. The bewildering feeling of knowing you are so lucky to be there, to be loving and loved so deeply, but that word just seems so misplaced. How can you be lucky to have lost so profoundly too? But you are also proud of yourself, for having the courage to open yourself up again to true love, knowing precisely how much you could stand to lose. Loving is such a vulnerable act, and after already being in the most vulnerable place, it’s such a brave thing to do.
“Ibiza serves up these kinds of moments in droves; the spiritual connections you share on dancefloors, when a forgotten tune comes on, the mesmerising lights, the ice cannons, the confetti, the sheer love and joy enveloping it all.”
My late husband has never been subtle with his signs for me. I was swarmed by ladybirds straight after he died, they were everywhere. One joined our little family a few years later, on Christmas Day, sitting on a vase in the centre of our table as we laughed and sang. I’ve never seen a ladybird in December before. One landed on me as I took a phone call for an interview with a magazine about our story, just as I was wondering whether it was the right thing to do and if he would be ok with it. One was perched on the windowsill as I was checking for the taxi to take us to our legal registry office ceremony in the UK, just before Ibiza. Our song would always come on at profound moments, like just as we were about to move into our new-build home and were saying goodbye to the kitchen in our rented apartment, about to unplug and pack the radio.
I hadn’t had a sign from him at all during our week-long wedding celebrations in Ibiza, I wasn’t looking, but then I never am. Signs don’t tend to work like that. I felt as though he was standing aside, knowing this was our time. As much as he was a part of it, this celebration wasn’t for him; it was for us, our family and our friends.
Until it came to our final dance of the week, the night before we were flying home to reality and the first time it had just been the two of us on the dancefloor. We were at the Melon Bomb closing party at Pikes when the music finished and the lights came up, so we started to make a move to leave. But there was one more tune. The familiar opening bars of a song that had meant so much to me and him. Our first dance, his funeral song. The one that the radio had played in that empty kitchen that day. One that, for a long time, I had to turn off if it came on, the emotions connected to it being too much to bear.
Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac.
As I say, I’ve had plenty of signs from my loved ones who are no longer here, but I’ve never felt someone’s presence in a moment quite like this before. It was beautiful, magical, joyful and heartbreaking all at once. Warren and I just stared at each other, not quite believing our ears as we simultaneously said a quiet thank you to him, for giving this moment to us. For his blessing. Then we embraced and we danced. All three of us. Under the best disco ball of all, with the lights and the love wrapped around our bodies, hearts and souls.