Funeral for a Friend....

I farewelled one of my oldest and dearest friends last week. She was farewelled by a church full of friends and family (I commented that I doubted my funeral would attract as many! ) she was a good person and she died at the hand of someone who had professed to love her.

We met at university in 1989 both keen to recommence our nursing studies which we had started in the old hospital system but for different reasons both discontinued, however the passion for nursing was always there and it bought us together.

We were like chalk and cheese and we were a living example of "opposites attracting"  we became firm friends, and she became part of our extended family, so much so that my friend was a Doula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doula  for my sister while was  in labour having her twin boys.

She revelled in my family of 4 children and never came empty-handed to the house knowing that there were 4 little  children who eagerly anticipated her arrival always with a treat,   usually something sweet! After university our careers took different directions but we stayed in touch just as much as we had during university, probably even more so, as life dealt its challenges for us to overcome over the years.

She was a very intelligent woman, indeed it was our friendly rivalry that was the cornerstone of our friendship, we were always competing to see who got the most distinctions, the best reports for their work etc etc. She went on to do midwifery, and a masters in public health which saw her undertake work with the most disadvantaged and marginalised people in our society and she loved it!

I used to laugh at her to get a real job like the rest of us, you know a 9-5 job, but the life of regular routine was not for her, it would interfere with her belly dancing class, visiting family and friends and of course the travel, she loved to travel be it in Australia or overseas.

Many of her friends wanted to know how such a intelligent, beautiful and kind woman did not have someone else in her life, she used to say she was too fussy, or not interested but I suspect that like all of us she secretly wanted someone to share her life with.

Then she was introduced to "him", I am admitting a bias here already as I did not like him from the first time I met him, but I was prepared to tolerate him if it made my friend happy.  And it did... for a while and then things, no she began to change.

She was never available for our "girl time" lunches or visits, because "he" might have a job or didn't have a job and she would have to look after him, indeed,  he never had a job the 7 years he was with my friend, she supported him the entire time, although he was introduced to her as "financially indepandant" ( from the .com era supposdly ).

The visits became less and the emails and phone messages dropped off over the last 2 years. She could not come to my Big Event birthday because "He" might have a job and they couldn't get away for the night! This was not the woman I knew of old, she would have come as a strong independent woman and proud to it!

During the last 12 months I spoke with my friend about 4 times always with "him" present, it seemed she was not allowed to be alone with me (or probably anyone), we wondered what she she continued to see in him. He was a man with no past, no family, and we were never told his surname or any anecdotes from his past:  the story given was "he had a falling-out with his family and does not have anything to do with them".  She came from a large, loving European migrant family and this was an anathema to their culture.

Recently I saw a visible crack appear in the relationship, my friend had inherited some money and wanted to buy a little place down the south coast but "he" wanted a place on the north coast. We spent a day with them showing them places around us,  but for "him" it was not right, even though my friend enthused widely about the places we showed them.

As regular readers know we went overseas for Christmas, but I did manage to get my Christmas cards out to those I knew I would not see for a while. This included my friend who was always the first one to send the annual Christmas card, we did not get one before we left so I expected one to be waiting in the mail box when we returned.  There was no card last year.

My friend was found dead in her home a couple of weeks ago,  in a manner that does not bear thinking about. "He" rode a motorbike into the path of an oncoming truck a couple of days later, and was killed.

I have been pondering the whole thing over the last couple of weeks and wish that I had said or done something about the relationship earlier. I heard from one of her family she had been trying to leaving the relationship for a while, but she obviously couldn't tell her friends, and it hurts me to think that she did not want to let people know that her relationship was not the picture perfect one she tried to present to us all.

I have a lot of wishes and a wish list  in the last bit of this post:

I wish I had said to my friend, are you ok?

I wish I had told her of my reservations about her partner

I wish I had questioned him more about his past and hopefully got an insight into his character more

I wish I had rung or visited my friend after we got home from holidays

I wish she had told me she was trying to leave the relationship:  why didn't she, afraid to admit a failed relationship?

I wish that all of us make sure our friends/family are in healthy happy relationships and look out for warning signs and speak up if we fear otherwise.



I wish she was still here!

a blast from the past

I have been cleaning out my home computer files as it has really passed its use by date ( a bit like me some days) and I found this little piece I wrote in 1999... so in the spirit of recycling and being 100% environmentally friendly here it is!

What’s in a name

(or a Kate by any other name would be as sweet)

An observer piece by someone with multiple personality disorder

Have you ever wondered who you would be if you were not you?  This is not a deep philosophical question merely one of those annoying thoughts that occasionally gets into your mind and just won’t budge.  It may be due to a mid life crisis, but lately I have been wondering if my life would have turned out differently if I had a different name. Does our name define who we are to become, or do we become the name we are destined to be? I, like many, do not use the name I was given at birth and over the years I have been different versions of my name to different people.

This precedent was started early. My mother wanted me to be called Ann-Marie, and my father wanted me to be named after his mother, Kathleen. My mother exercised her perogative to naming rights as the “one who went through the pain and suffering of childbirth”, so my birth certificate was filled out as Ann-Marie. My father was given the task of posting said birth certificate and saw this as his opportunity to assert his male dominance, so with a dash of the pen he slipped a Kathleen in front of the Ann-Marie and thus it was that I became a Kathleen Anne-Marie. (I must at this juncture state how grateful I was that I was too young to remember the scene when the birth certificate arrived and my mother now found out that her daughter Ann-Marie was now a Kathleen. Needless to say this did not harbour well for marital bliss, although my parents went on to have two other children and as far as I know, there were no arguments over their names.)

So now I was Kathleen! It may have been due to my mother’s disappointment with my father changing my name but I was never Kathleen to her;  I was Kate. On the other hand,  to my father’s side of the family I was Kathleen. Imagine, dear reader, the pain of being two different people at such a tender age! Kate was a cheeky and vivacious child, while Kathleen was the quiet, good child. Kate was the girl who climbed trees, loved playing with the boys and was quite a sportswoman. While Kathleen, was a scholar, musician and writer. How these two totally different people managed to inhabit one person I cannot tell you, but it was certainly interesting at the time!

Over the years there have been battles between Kate and Kathleen for dominance, with neither ever becoming all powerful, when another personality emerged - Katie, and not just one Katie but two! There was kt who became an internet groupie and e-mail junkie and general geek  grrl ( that is not a spelling or typo either!)  who  was last seen flying through cyber space and katie o’ banrock a sweet Irish lass. This is how she  ko'b that it, was made her presence felt.

katie o’banrock (notice how she does not use upper case? That is because her parents were too poor to afford upper case letters) was imprisoned in a bottle of Banrock Station Cabernet Shiraz by a wicked leprechaun ( for no particular reason, other than he was having a bad day and she really pissed him off, you will have to wait for her autobiography to find out why!) and doomed to spend the rest of her days at the back of the shelf in the Bottle Shop. But, as fortune would have it Kate was at the bottle shop looking to purchase something for the big family gathering that was taking place the next day. She had heard her mother in law favoured a drop of the old Banrock Station and always one to please her guests she searched until she found some, and as luck would have it, there had been a rush on Banrock Station Cabernet Shiraz ( I think it must have been on a buy-one-get-a-dozen-free kind of thing)   and so there was only one bottle left …………………………………….. yes!  the one with katie o’banrock inside it.

I think we would have to say there must have be some cosmic intervention here, because the bottle of Banrock Station Cabernet Shiraz wasn’t opened at the big family gathering. Be grateful for small mercies, goodness knows what could have happened if katie o’banrock has been launched upon some poor unsuspecting person who had only the experience of being one person. But as luck would have it Kate sat down to enjoy a glass when all the guests had gone (Kathleen would never drink alone, and kt was too busy on the internet to think about drinking!)  and as she consumed the (entire bottle) of Banrock Station a strange metamorphosis began to take place,  she started talking in an Irish accent and memories of a place far  away came to mind   http://www.banrockstation.com.au/ 

 (I suspect kt probably was in on this!) and katie o’banrock was free!

And so now dear reader, I live with all four of them, Kate, Kathleen, kt and katie o’banrock. It can get a bit crowded at times, and if you can imagine four women living together it does get a bit bitchy but imagine how boring my life might have been if I had been Ann-Maire!

The End.

© the 4 Ks 1999.