Five

Today marks five years since the death of my friend. On that day five years ago I was woken up by my phone ringing, it was early so I knew something was wrong because who calls at 5:30am for a chat? My friends husband was on the end of the line, he made no sense and I was cross. You are making no sense, I said: let me speak to someone who can tell me what is going on, I said. A new voice came on the line who introduced itself as a paramedic and confirmed my name and then told me that they were very sorry but my friend had died in the night and how quickly could I get to the house as my support was required with the children.

Ok I said, I’ll come.

Of course I did not believe that. My friend was 41, she had been to work the day before, I had messaged her, she had answered, she was fine. You don’t need to come, I said to my husband, it will be fine, sort out the girls I said.

Even when I arrived, when I could see the ambulance and police cars blocking the road, I don’t think I fully comprehended what was going on. I quizzed the paramedic on the door, who told me that my friend had died, she was in her bedroom and no I couldn’t go to see her. But she is on her own, I said. He actually told me to get my shit together, we need you to sort out the children (my friend has 4 children, ranging from 6 – 18 at the time) You really need to get your shit together he said.

Ok, I said. I will, I said and I did.

So I went inside and it was actually true. The children were in the front room with another paramedic, perhaps the one that spoke to me on the phone earlier. They were dazed and confused. It’s ok I said, even though it clearly wasn’t. Their Dad was in the kitchen with the police, their mothers body was upstairs, on her own – it was very much not ok at all.

But when you are 6 years old certain things need to happen even if the world around you has upended itself. I am hungry, she said and I need a wee. Ok, I said: I will sort it out. When I left the room, that’s when it dawned on me that the house was a crime scene. Because 41 year old women don’t just drop down dead and even though the police had told me, it was not suspicious, of course it was. The police said my friends parents were on their way and that’s when I thought, I need to get the children out of the house.

So I called my husband and said, I need you to come, I need to get the children out of here and I can’t get them all in my stupid tiny car. I am on my way he said.

Turns out you can’t just walk out of a house, that’s a crime scene, with a load of children who don’t belong to you. So I had to wait for a police check to be completed, which was pretty quick to be fair and then we left. Back to the safety of my own house, where we sat in the garden, eating ice creams, because we didn’t know what else to do and wondering if the world would ever be the same again.

No one tells you how to grieve. No one tells you what it’s like when a person is no longer there, with no warning. How awful it is to be the person who has to call your family and friends to give that news. Or how to deal with your own grief whilst trying to support those around you. Or how long the grieving process is.

I met my friend when we were 9. By 13, we were best friends. Anything that happened in my life, she was there and vice versa. From school to babies, marriages to divorce, happy times to down right bloody awful times. And then she wasn’t. In many ways the universe looked after us that year. We had so many adventures in that 6 months, so many laughs, so much dancing, so many hours drinking beer by a fire. So many ways to say goodbye – I just didn’t know.

You have to say Yes to stuff, she would say. Let’s do everything, she would say. Come on, let’s go she would say.

It’s like she knew on some level that hers wasn’t a life that would give her time to put things on hold for another time. Like she some how knew, she would one day go to bed, after a day at work, after a evening of playing in a splash pool with the children & watching tv with a glass of wine with her husband, that she would go to bed and never wake up. It was a brain aneurysm, just hiding there, waiting.

After five years, I still feel shock; I am not at peace with it. It still hurts in the same way.

I miss her endlessly.