Twelve Months and Counting: a true story of love, loss, grief and hope

In 'Twelve Months and Counting' writer and musician Andy Smith travels unsteadily through the first year of life without his wife.When Helen died of cancer in August 2019 the loss was enormous. She was fifty six years old. Initially he found comfort in documenting his progress through Facebook posts and composing music. But after a year had passed, he felt the need to write something more substantial and share his experiences of what it's really like to lose the most important person in your life.This book is an honest, heartbreaking, occasionally funny account of how he's coped with his new life. A life without Helen. He tells the story of how they met, about their love. He talks about her illness and her premature death. He tells how he's tried to cope with his loss and acknowledges the help of family and friends and the benefit of counselling.Through personal anecdotes, Andy weaves the tsunami of grief with 'real life' events. He intersperses the chapters with candid excerpts from some of his Facebook posts, which adds a poignant truth to the narrative.This is his story, warts and all. A first hand account of how it feels to be 'the one that's left behind'. The confusion, the desperation, the total disbelief, but ultimately the hope