My story Losing Vivien

I’m not asking for special sympathy as I tell this story. Because most couples come to the point where I did when one of them dies, leaving the other to mourn. It happens all the time, and the one left behind has to face the reality that they are alone. But Vivien’s death was personal. We had been married 45 years, and we loved each other to pieces.

We’d had an exciting life together. I’d met Vivien just after I returned from running a hospital in the Peruvian Amazon for a year. The stories from that time that I shared with her were enough to seduce her to not only marry me, but to want to share more adventures together. It was so easy to fall in love with this beautiful, strong woman.

Immediately after we were married, we worked for Save the Children Fund in Bangladesh and Afghanistan. We only just escaped from Afghanistan weeks before the country collapsed in 1977. We were blessed with the