A Sad Goodbye
A very dear old friend has died and I go to her funeral on Wednesday. Eve was an extraordinary person, strong yet fragile, extremely funny and at the same time there was a sad vulnerability about her.
Some old friends from my London days will be there too. I expect we’ll meet up with the usual cries of “you haven’t changed a bit” and then after a quick catch up will fall silent as we remember why we’re there.
Eve had no family to speak of. Her dad died not long after WW2 and her mum in the mid 1980s. She had a sister, a rather strange woman who had no interest in Eve at all and it turns out moved house without even letting Eve know. Sad. And that’s the word that keeps coming back to me. Yet there was so much laughter during our friendship, squeals and howls and hoots of it. We had great times together, not only us two, but with our husbands, John (mine) and Keith. Keith was a real character also, extremely charming and bright, an ex-public schoolboy who seemed to know everything. He was always so attentive to Eve and her friends would always joke with her “can I have him when you’re finished?”. You can imagine our shock (not to mention Eve’s) when he killed himself. Initially, we all thought it was money, the house was due to be repossessed and he was in enormous debt with credit cards. His business folded too and he was actually looking for work.
I was very close to Eve during that sad time, helping as much as I could, but her breakdown was as complete as it was inevitable. Poor thing, she just couldn’t deal with all the negative information coming through about Keith after his death. I don’t think anyone could. It was a tidal wave of bad news, one thing after another, until she finally was sent into hospital where she could be cared for.
She recovered well during her 6-month stay in hospital and eventually started to pick up the pieces of her life. She started work, made new friends and when John and I eventually returned up north I left feeling she was okay.
We kept in touch, visited each other but things eventually went bad again for Eve. Her health began to deteriorate and she left her job. She became very depressed and I suggested therapy (which I’d had myself) but she didn’t like the idea of telling a stranger about her life. I think she may have felt guilty about Keith (without any justification) and it is one of the many tragedies of her life that had she gone into therapy she would have discovered that her feelings were completely natural.
After a while though we stopped ringing each other. The last time I spoke to Eve, she was very low and sounded as if she was on drugs. The next few times I rang her, she didn’t want to speak for long. I told her to ring me when she could but she never did. How lame it all sounds, but that’s what happens in life, you lose touch, time runs on and your life takes over, stuff happens that takes all your attention and then, out of the blue, you hear of the death of someone who meant a lot to you.
So I’ll go to the funeral on Wednesday and say a last goodbye to Eve. It will be mingled with tears and laughter, her memory bittersweet.
A very dear old friend has died and I go to her funeral on Wednesday. Eve was an extraordinary person, strong yet fragile, extremely funny and at the same time there was a sad vulnerability about her.
Some old friends from my London days will be there too. I expect we’ll meet up with the usual cries of “you haven’t changed a bit” and then after a quick catch up will fall silent as we remember why we’re there.
Eve had no family to speak of. Her dad died not long after WW2 and her mum in the mid 1980s. She had a sister, a rather strange woman who had no interest in Eve at all and it turns out moved house without even letting Eve know. Sad. And that’s the word that keeps coming back to me. Yet there was so much laughter during our friendship, squeals and howls and hoots of it. We had great times together, not only us two, but with our husbands, John (mine) and Keith. Keith was a real character also, extremely charming and bright, an ex-public schoolboy who seemed to know everything. He was always so attentive to Eve and her friends would always joke with her “can I have him when you’re finished?”. You can imagine our shock (not to mention Eve’s) when he killed himself. Initially, we all thought it was money, the house was due to be repossessed and he was in enormous debt with credit cards. His business folded too and he was actually looking for work.
I was very close to Eve during that sad time, helping as much as I could, but her breakdown was as complete as it was inevitable. Poor thing, she just couldn’t deal with all the negative information coming through about Keith after his death. I don’t think anyone could. It was a tidal wave of bad news, one thing after another, until she finally was sent into hospital where she could be cared for.
She recovered well during her 6-month stay in hospital and eventually started to pick up the pieces of her life. She started work, made new friends and when John and I eventually returned up north I left feeling she was okay.
We kept in touch, visited each other but things eventually went bad again for Eve. Her health began to deteriorate and she left her job. She became very depressed and I suggested therapy (which I’d had myself) but she didn’t like the idea of telling a stranger about her life. I think she may have felt guilty about Keith (without any justification) and it is one of the many tragedies of her life that had she gone into therapy she would have discovered that her feelings were completely natural.
After a while though we stopped ringing each other. The last time I spoke to Eve, she was very low and sounded as if she was on drugs. The next few times I rang her, she didn’t want to speak for long. I told her to ring me when she could but she never did. How lame it all sounds, but that’s what happens in life, you lose touch, time runs on and your life takes over, stuff happens that takes all your attention and then, out of the blue, you hear of the death of someone who meant a lot to you.
So I’ll go to the funeral on Wednesday and say a last goodbye to Eve. It will be mingled with tears and laughter, her memory bittersweet.
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