My Hero

A Truly Wonderful Man

Life seemed to be going quite well, we were both working hard. John was a Business Analyst and I had a Secretarial position. We had a nice home and although we did not earn a fortune we had all we needed.

I had to have time off work as I was unwell and friends were ringing me telling me the company was moving.

I had a phone call shortly afterwards to tell me they were in fact moving to Reading and offering me redundancy.

I accepted the redundancy and felt sure I would be able to get another job as my health seemed to be improving.

In the meantime John’s company was taken over and he was made redundant too.

Within 3 months neither of us had a job.

But we were positive that one of us would work, but being sensible we would put our redundancy money together and pay off the mortgage.

We drove to the Building Society and paid in the money it was a wonderful feeling but we still had to live on a very small amount of savings that were left.

My health deteriorated and we both realised I would not be able to work again at 53 I felt my life finished. I had to keep uplifted for John as one by one rejection letters came through the post. He went for so many interviews and when he came back seemed so sure this was the one, “The interview went so well” he would say this is the one. Then waiting for the post each morning just to be told he had not got it.

A year later things were getting harder, John started applying for jobs in Supermarkets, anything to keep us going.

Then one day he had a phone call,

”That’s great” I heard him say when can I start. He had applied for several jobs one of these was as a Health and Safety Officer I thought this was the phone call.

He came off the phone.

“Well I said”.

“I have been offered a job in a supermarket” he said I start on Monday. Nothing more was said.

Monday came he started at 7 a.m. so was up at 6 a.m. I kissed him goodbye and saw a sadness I hadn’t seen before.

He never complained, was always up at 6 a.m. Sometimes I see the tiredness on his face as he is not in the best of health, but realise that he is doing this for us.

When friends asked me how I felt about him working in a supermarket I held my head up high and said how proud I was of him, he could have seen us go under with bills piling up or worse still little food on the table, but he swallowed his pride and did something about it and I am very proud of him.