CATHERINE
London, United Kingdom
Day 67
Eulogy for Anthony Lawrence—January 8, 2026
Anthony and I met on the first day of Freshers’ week at Oxford University in September 2010. Having been at a girls’ boarding school for seven years, I was absolutely determined to have fun. I was going to kiss as many boys as possible and run rampant around Oxford. I would be wild.
Within twenty-four hours of arriving at Oxford, I had a boyfriend. I don’t think Anthony knew that he was my boyfriend back then. We met in the college bar, and I made cheerful, devoted conversation with him all evening. I essentially invited myself to his room for the night and decided, the next morning, that he was my boyfriend. At some point he must have agreed this was a good plan because for the next fifteen years, we built a life together. We never spent a night apart if we could possibly help it.
It’s easy to describe Anthony by his achievements and most obvious attributes. His First in Computer Science from Oxford. His handsome face and warm smile. His job, working in . . . I’m going to be really honest here and say that I know it had something to do with software and he was very good at it but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. Maybe it’s not so easy for me to describe Anthony from his achievements after all. You’ll all have to take my word for it that they were boundless.
The more important things though are those that lots of you might not have seen but that I had the privilege to witness. The devotion with which he would try and buy me the perfect Christmas present every year even though he had absolutely no idea what my taste really was. In fifteen years he managed to buy the most hideous thing in Liberty about twelve times. Sunday mornings starting with a pain au chocolat and a cappuccino delivered to me in bed even though he didn’t like hot drinks and preferred toast, but “It’s okay,” he’d tell me cheerfully. “Gail’s is only ten minutes away, I know you like their stuff the best.” His footsteps padding downstairs in the middle of the night to put the heating up when I was too cold. His triumphant purchase and surprise delivery of an air conditioner when I was seven months pregnant during a heat wave in May and regularly cried at the sheer unfairness of the temperature. The way he held my hand every night when our son, who arrived not long after the air conditioner did, lay in a NICU four miles away and for weeks I couldn’t sleep on my side because of the C-section wound. “I’m right here,” he’d say every time I startled awake and cried, inconsolable after my body failed us so spectacularly. His kindness with our son. The stories he would make up about a bear, despite there being a limited number of things bears can feasibly do, every night for six months at our son’s request. The way he would always say “Yes” to me when I asked him a question as he was falling asleep. The way he told me when he proposed he would always love me, no matter what, and that lots of people didn’t think they could promise to love someone forever but he honestly could, really truly, he promised. “How could I not?” he said. The way he knew, even when we were teenagers and he had no right to such wisdom, that love is more than fireworks and declarations. It is steady, certain sureness. It is knowing that you are loved. It is knowing that you are not alone.
I don’t have a family. My parents died in a car crash when I was ten. My godmother looked after me in the holidays and I went to boarding school during term. I think I knew, as soon as I saw Anthony all those years ago, that he would be my family. I could have a family of my own built from the ground up. But I didn’t want it unless it was with him. Everything was better with him around.
I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the Plague. I want Anthony to be defined by his life, not his death. I wish we hadn’t spent so much time worrying about the Plague before he died. The Plague stole that time from us too. I will say that Anthony faced death with the love, humor and compassion he faced everything else in his life. Somehow, in the days before he fell ill, he still reassured and comforted me. He told me everything would be all right and for the occasional moment, I even believed him.
But everything isn’t going to be all right. It’ll never really be all right again. I don’t want to end with a platitude because Anthony was honest. Never to the point of cruelty, but he was straightforward. He didn’t even manage to keep his planned proposal a secret because he didn’t like the deceit of it. It’s a good thing though that he told me. The original ring he picked was horrendous.