January: you spar with resolutions to turn your
life around. You fall for the notion that at the turn of the year you can flick
a switch and be remade. You can put things behind you and move on into a bright
new future.
It’s important to feel that way. It’s important to assess
where you are and take steps to redeem/reform/renew your life. Time is an
arrow: its flight is to the future. Go with it.
Time is also a net, though. It traps and holds you, even
while you poke your reaching hands out through its mesh. It’s a boomerang,
rapping you on the temple, bouncing you back to your roots.
So, this is a very personal post, this January. For many years I’ve dreaded this time of year because of huge personal loss. Now,
I have even more reason. A year ago (the day after, ironically, the other dark
anniversary) my friend walked out of her life. Out of all our lives. We didn’t
know that then – we only knew she’d gone missing. For nine weeks of hoping but
dreading, that was all we knew for sure. Then she was found. Two weeks after
that, we attended her funeral.
It’s hard to put into words what the past year has been
like. No day has gone by without thinking of her, of her husband and son, of
her sister and parents. No day has gone by without thinking of what she went
through and of blaming myself for not seeing how bleak her inner space had
become.
So, on this anniversary of her leaving us, I want to
write about my friendship with her and what it meant to me.
There are junctures in your life when it really matters
who you meet. University is one of these: it’s a crucible for forging deep and
binding friendships. There are experiences shared there which are different
from those of later life. You are searching for yourself, for who you are – and
in that search you find yourself by ‘trying on’ friendships. Some fit only for
a season, then the fashion passes. Some fit for a lifetime and never wear out.
I met Susan at Aberdeen University in the mid-1970s; we
became close as we progressed through a demanding and exciting four year MA in
English Language and Literature. I specialised in
medieval literature, she specialised in linguistics. We were typical
students – we’d drink and dance at the Students’ Union, where Susan would
endeavour to save me from yet another inappropriate romantic obsession. We’d
scoot out of the library after all of forty five minutes of work, to sit for
hours in King’s Pavilion, drinking coffee and bemoaning our heavy work-load. I
mean,
three long essays in a term!
Count them! Three!
In 1979 we sat for the last time in the exam room in
Elphinstone Hall. That last exam was Old Norse. When we turned the paper over
we looked up at each other and smiled, because it was a good paper. A couple of
hours later we were sitting in a nearby pub where old men nursed their pints
and young men argued about football. We two, fresh from the world of the sagas,
shell-shocked, realising that had been our final
Final paper.
We had the rest of our lives to look forward to. Unknown
territory. Scary.
Life took us on separate paths. Susan studied
librarianship at Aberystwyth, then settled in Dundee. I had a tough year in
Aberdeen before moving to Oxford. I visited her in Dundee at the start of 1982,
when the temperature went down to minus 25 and the air came into your lungs
like a stiletto – we went to a local health centre for a sauna just to thaw
out. In 1983 I attended her very lovely wedding and cried
to listen to her father’s speech about her, full of love and pride.
She visited Oxford, of course, both before and after her
marriage, and we met up in the Dordogne when she and her husband were holidaying near
where we were. Later, Susan and I were pregnant at the same time. I could go on, listing the meetings
which grew more sporadic as the years went by and our lives were full of the
business of living.
On her last visit to Oxford we had a long giggly lunch at
the Ashmolean, reminiscing about our past, as old friends do. We listened to
the choir in Merton College singing for Advent and that entranced her. It was
in the Ashmolean that I took the photo of her, full of joy, which was to gaze
out at me so poignantly from Facebook timelines and news reports during the
time she was missing.
I knew, of course, that the strains in her life were
affecting her and that darkness hovered. Yet I underestimated the risk because
after a phase of non-communication she’d come back into the light and be Susan
still. Her pain, though, became a den into which she withdrew. None of us could
accompany her there. None of us could take her by the hand and lead her out,
like Eurydice returning from the underworld.
Now that she has been gone for a year, I want to say
something that captures what
she was. I don’t think I can. Four hundred people came to her funeral. That
says something about her. She was – and here’s the irony – a joy. A joyous
person. She was empathic, gossipy, acerbic, warm. We shared a love of books, it
goes without saying. We shared those moments of finding your way in the world. She
understood me and thought more of me than I deserved.
She had a quick wit and a sentimental streak. Her laugh
was unrestrained and irresistible. She was devoted to her parents, to her man,
to her boy. She never failed in her love and her protectiveness. She learned to
fight against the unyielding system, fight for her husband when he could no
longer fight for himself. She endured the strain, she found religious faith,
she drew love to her everywhere she went, she spread ripples of worry and grief
when she left all our lives.
She was beautiful and utterly feminine. Four hundred
miles apart, we would often buy the same scarf, the same necklace. It was a joy
to buy a gift for her and it breaks my heart that I never will again.
Last year, her loss wasn’t the last loss. My dear
brother-in-law abruptly left this life too, and there is a different sort of
devastation involved in that.
My responses to Susan’s death have been complex, riddled
with guilt and bewilderment, for hers was a chosen departure. We can understand
that choice but feel mangled by it, for we knew her value and the value of her
life. All bereavement involves selfishness – ‘What about me?’ we cry. ‘How
could you leave me?’
How, though, feeling as she did, could she stay?
Since her death, white feathers have floated onto my
path, in through my window. I’m not airy-fairy in my beliefs, but still, I
gather and keep them. Keep sending those feathers for me, dear friend. Keep
forgiving me for not being aware enough. The black dog has growled at my door
before. I should have known he was on your trail and hunting you down.
.JPG)
