I've just heard that one of my friends has died. It was expected; she has been very ill for a while, but that doesn't lessen the blow. I've known her for well over twenty years. We actually didn't see each other that often, didn't socialise as such, but that doesn't matter. She was a true, trusted and wise friend whom I loved a lot. It was a hard-won friendship, in many ways. Intensely private, she didn't give her trust easily and our bond was worked out over a long time. It was a bond, for both of us. We didn't just 'chat' when we met, we really talked. She was a woman of taste: creative, artistic, a gardener, sculptor and ceramicist. She was a wonderful champion of my photography and encouraged me to pursue that. I'm very glad to have known her and her loss will leave a huge hole for me (though, of course, an even bigger one for her husband and three daughters, whose pain I can barely imagine).
I'm sure I shall go through many emotions in the next few weeks. I can already feel the anger. The disease that killed her was the same cruel disease that took my mother too, although my friend was much younger than my mum. At this stage in life, I suppose we have to come to terms with our friendship group gradually diminishing but that doesn't make it easier or less painful.
I took this photo today, before I heard the news, and yet it seems perhaps a fitting tribute. The fallen leaves still shine, so much like jewels. I'm sure she would have appreciated that. May she rest in peace.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
