Morpethroad

Everyone says it gets easier.

My friend Jeannie would have turned 18 today. Instead she’s that time old cliché, forever young.

It’s been 7 weeks, 3 days, 11 hours and 37 minutes since the day. What started out as any other day ended up anything but that.

The day before we had been at the beach. It was warm but not warm enough for us to take to the water.

Rather we were sitting in the coffee shop and we were watching the waves.

We did that a lot.

We used the time to talk about the things that griped us, the things we didn’t want others to know about and the grand plans we made for after school. Like our cruise for schoolies, our year off to see the world, I wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower and Jeannie wanted to see the pyramids.

I could never understand why she was so obsessed by all that hot and dry weather she’d have to put up with but she’d always say she wanted to see the oldest civilizations, and stand in front of the great pyramid and say she had been there.

Despite all my protests she stuck to her dream and we had begun planning, like how many shifts we’d have to do to get enough for the fares.

Today I went to school and looked into our room, at the people there and the vacant chair beside me, still with her scrawl ‘kiss my arse’ across the back. She was always making fun, she could see the funny side of any situation, and we shared so much, homework, lunches, gossip and detentions. I thought I knew her, but the more I think about it the less I understand and the more I realise I didn’t know her.

That’s the thing about people. You think you know them, you think you know where they are at and where they are coming from and then from out of left field they spring something on you that you can never see coming.

And you are helpless.

You can’t stop it when you don’t know its happening.

Then it’s all over before you have any time to react and you are left there, staring into space, bewildered, confused, you can’t believe what you are hearing, you don’t want to hear what you are being told.

An abyss opens up and you sink into it. It all happens so fast, the turnaround from joy to despair so rapid all you can do is sit and sit and think of her face, her smile, and scream deep inside WHY?

You look around and life goes on. The people less affected go back to what they always do, the trivial and meaningful continue along side by side, lessons continue, there are shifts to be worked, its business as usual and somewhere in the midst of it all you are trying to make some fist of what is going on. Cause you don’t understand.

But some things just won’t go away. I can’t get it out of my head that I should have seen something. Known it was coming. Noticed some sign.

But nothing.

There’s that awful sense of guilt because if only you have had some clue, anything you might have been able to make some difference.

Jeannie had a great family. Her parents are devastated. She was so loved, they can’t understand.

The funeral was so sad seeing them there, their grief so obvious, they just sat and stared, held hands, lent against each other, knowing that nothing could change one single moment of the pain they were suffering. Afterwards they tried so hard to appear gracious, shaking hands with people they didn’t know and embracing those they did, but all the time their eyes betrayed how vacant they felt.

But for me it’s a struggle to understand why she didn’t say something to me. I was her friend. I would have listened, helped, been there, but I now feel this overall sense of rejection, for the one time when everything was important, when our lives mattered, there was nothing. Like it wasn’t important, it didn’t matter, that she could let it go and leave me here, with so many questions, with all this anger and I can’t ask her anything.

What was going through her head at that time? Had she thought about it for a while, was it something spontaneous, was the pain so great, unbearable, did it matter how, was the how a statement, if it was to whom, because Jeannie we are all suffering.

I hope it was a relief. Were you happy just to get it done? I hope you didn’t suffer. I hope you didn’t regret it all when it was too late. I hope that wherever you are the pain has gone and you are in a better place.

But I can’t deal with the notion that what you did was an act of selfishness I never thought was in you. My anger I have to deal with, I have to come to terms with, and I have to stop hating you for what you did. But it is hard to understand something you know so little about. Why not leave a note, some explanation, and some idea to those of us left here.

They say over time it gets easier, that the pain lessens, the anger subsides. But that’s not a help right now when all I feel is pain and frustration that my friend whom I loved, is not here, has left me to gather into myself all that she was and for me to hold those bits that I thought were precious for us both.

I have to find closure. I receive a lot of advice about that. But not yet. I visit her each week now. In the first few weeks it was every day. I would sit there and cry my heart out and beat the soil above her and rage against her until I was done, exhausted, then go home and sleep.

Recently a friend asked me this question – Do you think life is beautiful and joyful or full of trouble and untruth?

I thought about it for a while before I wrote this in response to her question.

Is Life Good?

Look at what you have around you.

A family.

Work.

A place to live.

You love, you are loved in return.

You start every day anticipating all things positive.

Everyday someone or something will make you laugh. 

You value your friends, your friends value you.

You will cry on their shoulder, they on yours.

Confidences will be shared.

You will respect, you will be respected.

You will listen and be listened to.

Wonderful things will happen.

Sometimes you’ll be left speechless.

Some days you want to sing with happiness.

So amid the trouble and the untrue, good exists.

So yes, life is beautiful 

Your eyes don’t see colour,

But together we rejoice, listening to my descriptions,

Your laugh joyous over the riot of hues I paint,

On your fingertips then onto your heart.

My Aunt Maud was a beautiful woman and in the twenties she was a sought after model.

That’s her in the centre with Gert and Aggie her mates she seconded into the shoot.

Aunt Maud was a war widow. Her husband was killed in action on the western front.

At that time Maud had a small boy and her life went from the expectation of motherhood and family to one of desperation at how she might make ends meet.

Her husband’s death sapped her will and energy.

As a model however she attracted a lot of work.

She was away a lot and Bill was cared for by his grandparents.

In later life Bill would remember his mother as a most indifferent person.

‘She never seemed interested in mothering,’ he said.

How he managed to survive her and be the man has was, puzzled me.

My son is a famous/infamous artist depending on how you see his art work and he has played with embroidery as a form of artistic expression for a number of years.

He has produced a number of works, of double bed doona size, where he lays out his stories of social comment clearly for all to see.

His work has proved popular with one quilt currently the property of a major regional art gallery and another sold the first night it was exhibited.

That he can use fabric this way never ceases to amaze me as I watch his artistic skills and reputation develop.

Like a lot of good art it is stunning in its simplicity and made more so when you consider he has used a needle and thread to manipulate his images.

The Trifecta writing challenge is to write a creative response of no fewer than 33 and no more than 333 words, using a one-word prompt.

This week’s word is:

GRASP (verb):
3: to lay hold of with the mind: comprehend

Gees Louise

Louise looked at me with fiery eyes and this time stressed the point she was making.

‘I am not interested in being with you in any way shape or form.

You are not my type; you are persisting with something that is never going to happen.

Why waste your time. Get on with your life. I don’t want to part of it.’

I had heard it all before and so once again felt the fool for asking her out in the first place.

You build yourself up to ask, you grasp whatever courage is left from the last time you stepped forward, only to find a similar result.

I had discovered the women I was interested in were in no way interested in me.

The joke amongst my friends was that I did have women knocking on my door, trouble was they were on the inside trying to get out.

I had engaged in conversation with Louise a number of times at work and so it seemed a logical progression to ask her out.

We went to a bar where we enjoyed a pleasant evening. However it was on the way home that she put the kibosh on any future dates.

She was not interested; she had had too many bad experiences with men.

To put it bluntly I had balls and therefore that alone put me into the vermin category.

As she so succinctly stated, ‘What part of no don’t you understand!’

Our evening ended with her jumping out of my car and heading up her garden path, disappearing into her unit leaving me wondering how I got myself into a mess like this.