Living here in Cambridge, you had to have an identity. It was not enough to be a wife. So I did a Ph.D. in medieval Spanish poetry.

Jane Hawking

Categorized in : You Identity Poetry Wife

I had scarcely met Stephen, and then one Saturday I met some old friends for coffee, and they were saying, 'Gosh it's terrible about Stephen, isn't it?' They told me that he had been in St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London having horrible tests and then had been diagnosed with an atypical form of a rare disease - motor neurone disease.

me friends old-friends coffee

I don't think of my life as having two marriages; I think of it as a continuum.

my-life think life two

I suppose I was still optimistic and unrealistic, and I just hoped we could keep going as we were. But no. That was not good enough for Stephen, so off he went. Those were hard times. They really were. But then, I suppose, divorce is always hard.

good keep-going not-good-enough hard

When Stephen was first diagnosed, we weren't actually going out together, but I was already falling in love with him. He had beautiful eyes and this amazing sense of humour, so we were always laughing.

eyes together beautiful love

I was born in Norwich, which I still regard as the most beautiful city in the world, despite the attempts by the Luftwaffe to destroy it in the Second World War.

city beautiful war world

Gardening is one of my enduring, favourite, and most rewarding pastimes.

rewarding most gardening favourite

Just because you can no longer have a physical relationship with someone doesn't mean you don't love them.

someone you love relationship

The truth was, there were four partners in our marriage. Stephen and me, motor neurone disease, and physics. If you took out motor neurone disease, you are still left with physics.

me you marriage truth

I felt very committed to Stephen, and I didn't think he could manage without me. I wanted him to carry on doing his amazing work, and I wanted the children to have a stable family behind them - so we just carried on.

me family work children

Being Stephen's carer was such a struggle, and it's a lonely job looking after a disabled person. Thinking back, I honestly wonder how I got through it.

looking job struggle thinking

The gas man came one day, and he said, 'What does your husband do?' so I told him, and he said, 'What's the use of that?' He had a point, but on the other hand, I firmly believed in Stephen and his brilliance. I encouraged him to popularise his science just because the gas man had been so insulting.

day man husband science

When I was playing with the children, I felt I ought to be working, and when I was working, I felt I ought to be playing with the children.

playing working felt children

When I was little, I used to spend a lot of time making up stories when I was put to bed.

up used bed time

I felt it was terribly important, for Stephen and the children, to keep the family together.

family important together children

I understood Stephen's point of view because if you had been given a death sentence at the age of 21, would you find it easy to believe in a loving God? Also, Stephen's work was taking him into the depths of the universe, and it was, I thought, fairly understandable that there wasn't much room for God in his equations.

age god work death

I was always extremely determined, but I was also quite timid.

timid quite always determined

Of course I don't think any of the past will go away. The thing is, with me and Stephen, for many years, I put every spoon of food into his mouth, dressed him, and bathed him. You do not forget that experience.

me you experience food

Stephen's belief was that if you were free to do your absolute best work, you would be rewarded. My belief was that if you gave all of yourself to what you believed was right, then that would be enough.

yourself best you work

We would look up at the night sky together, and although Stephen wasn't actually very good at detecting constellations, he would tell me about the expanding universe and the possibility of it contracting again and describe a star collapsing in on itself to form a black hole in a way that was quite easy to understand.

good me together sky

I couldn't let him die; I was the agent of life for Stephen.

agent die him life