Lost - it now has a very, very different meaning

I lost a friend this week.  A dear friend. Back in New Zealand. 

I only found this out yesterday when I finally found a Wi-Fi café - I got the news via email.  I was, and am, gutted.

One of my greatest fears of leaving New Zealand shores for this period was leaving my friend back home and not knowing how she would be whilst I was away.  I hated leaving her when I last visited.  And now she has died.  I am not even sure which day she died. To get this news, and to get it via email when so far away on the other side of the world is heart breaking.

I so remember the look on her face when I last visited her before I left New Zealand, and she asked how long I would be away.  

She knew I was travelling to the UK and she knew why I was coming to Italy; she knew the story about Tony, the one I published on my last blog.  She had known and loved Tony and she understood why I was making the whole trip; but I saw the wave of sadness on her face when I told her how long I would be away; I saw her sadness that she would not see me for so long.  Now, she will never see me again.

She has gone.

All these deaths of such pivotal people in my life in this past period keeps reminding me of how fragile and short term we all are.

More specifically how we must realise that everyone in our life is special. With this modern life that everyone seems to be choosing nowadays that message seems to have been eliminated from many people's self-focused being.

For some time it has concerned me that there seems to be an epidemic around us that could be called the Me epidemic. This is something many have heard me rant about often over the years, how so many focus on their own life, their own busy-ness and just don't have time to fit in a teeny bit of kindness to someone else.

If there is a God  I am hoping he will be pleased of the friendship I (and Tony) had with our sweet friend, Ella.  We made her happy, most of the time. But like everyone else, there was never enough 'times'.  It was difficult when Tony had become so unwell himself - I did not want Ella to see Tony so unwell, I wanted her to only recall the real Tony - so I did not visit very frequently once Tony's health began to really deteriorate.  I am sure that her God will know and understand that.

In the meantime while I was focused on Tony and his passing, she became old, and became frail and fragile.  My friend and I found her late last year in the bowels of a hospital in care.  We were shocked.  She was then put into a rest home, where she has just passed away. 

Ella was hard work to visit and had been for some years prior. She was half deaf and always found a reason not to utilise a hearing aid.  We had to yell to be heard. Her eyesight was going and due to unnecessary reasons she became almost bedridden.  As is always said when something like this happens – I should have spent more time with her.  There's nothing wrong with yelling, or touching, or caring.   

It's totally empty words to say, "I shoulda."  Or, "I woulda."  Or, "I couldn't." 

We all CAN. 

We all can take and make the time for someone whose life would be lifted because we DID.