for REAL LIFE
After Christine Gill’s partner was given a devastating diagnosis, they wanted to make every day count…
Walking down the aisle at Bradford Town Hall Registry Office, my husband-to-be was waiting for me, crying his eyes out. Seeing his face, I choked back my own tears. I couldn’t wait to be his wife.
Paul Gill – or Gilly as I call him – and I had been together for almost two decades, and it was safe to say the past two years had been the most turbulent of our lives. But we’d finally made it to saying: ‘I do’.
I’d always been aware of Gilly. He was a professional rugby player in the 1980s and I’d worked in various pubs and social clubs over the years, but it wasn’t until 2007 that we really got talking. At 6ft 1in, he was over a foot taller than me but he was kind, caring, funny, and outgoing and we clicked straight away.
We liked going out for meals, watchuing films, and holidaying when we could. We’d both been married previously and had grownup kids but we quickly became a tight-knit unit.
‘When are you two getting hitched? ’ people always asked, but we were in no rush – we had our whole lives ahead of us.
It wasn’t until 2021 that Gilly proposed during a meal while we were on holiday in Gran Canaria.
‘Yes!’ I said happily, as he slipped a diamond ring on to my finger.
Our friends and family were thrilled, particularly my sons and daughter, and his two kids. But in December 2022, I noticed a change in Gilly. He’d always been strong and played bowls regularly. He was left-handed and was struggling to play. By the January, as we were putting away the festive bits, I noticed he couldn’t get his left arm above his head and I offered to put the decorations on top of the wardrobe. He started losing weight, he was sleeping a lpt and when he was awake he had started to trip over. Something’s wrong, I thought, making him an appointment with the GP.
Gilly had type 2 diabetes and was on statins for his cholesterol but other than that we’d always thought he was in good health. He was referred to the hospital for tests and we tried not to worry too much. So in February 2023, we took a trip to Lanzarote as planned, but Gilly was too weak to help with the suitcases.
He couldn’t walk more than a few hundred yards without stopping, exhausted, and I had to help him up from the sun lounger each day. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ he said.
Over the following weeks, he kept falling and I’d have to rush home from my job to help him get up. Soon, he needed crutches to get around and after a battery of tests, in June 2023 we were called to St Lu
