Letters for Reanna
20th Dec 2013
It’s a good thing this is
being written on a keyboard not paper because I’m watery eyed again today. When
I decided to start writing again with a view to creating a blog site with
“here’s one I wrote earlier” stuff I little realised how soon they would come
in handy.
3 weeks ago, out of the blue I got a text
from my friend Reanna back in the UK.
Since I first had a stall on
Long Eaton market is as long as I have known her. Like several others, she soon progressed from customer to friend
and it was my pleasure to try to find her books she liked and to try to
persuade her to enjoy ones I’d particularly liked. She didn’t always. She
argued when I tried to give her discount let alone give her freebies and I’d find
money shoved in my pocket just when I thought I’d won. Her kids grew up reading
books from my stall. Her mum and dad are salt of the earth and stalwart
supporters of the market, part of our market family, compounded by her husband's stint as fishing stall entrepreneur and my neighbour on the market during
a period of unemployment. I’m not digressing, honest. This is background stuff.
The text said that she had
been putting off telling me, but the cancer she has been fighting for several
years was now affecting her lungs and without hope of successful treatment this
time. She’d beaten breast and lymph cancer already. She said she was in a
hospice and hoped to spend her time there or at home since she had had enough
of hospitals. Could she text me from time to time because she had been thinking
about me a lot?
This remarkable girl, some years
younger than me, has kids still at school and has been an inspiration to me as
long as I’ve known her. When she first got breast cancer, she told me she had
put off telling me that because she knew I would be upset. This was not because she
couldn’t cope with someone else’s emotion but an incredibly generous wish to
spare them at a time when she might reasonably be thinking only of herself. I
am truly humbled and amazed that she valued our friendship. So – can she text
me? Yes she can (sorry Bob the builder crept in there, but she wouldn’t mind,
for some reason she thought I was funny) but aye, here’s the rub – that’s
Shakespeare now – how the heck was I going to fit anything I have to say into a
text for goodness sake, it’s like quarts into pint pots or whatever it used to
be impossible to fit. She wanted to hear about me and my life in Spain. No, she didn’t have access to email. She was often
too tired and out of it to text so maybe I wouldn’t hear from her much.
A fit of inspiration at
least part fuelled by guilt, I could send her the stuff I’d been writing. I
could write more, and soon, for her benefit. If I could email rather than post
I could be sure whatever happened at least she’d had something from me after
all. I’d done so little to keep in touch because we just didn’t do that regular thing, she
knew she could email if she wanted to and I stopped because she never got round
to replying. We hadn’t seen each other for over a year, and I’d been too cowardly
to hunt her down and ask how she was because I had heard she’d had more
treatment and I didn’t relish bad news. A chance to do something for her after
all, and at her request – write for her. A phone call to the hospice enlisted
the help of nurse Pat who promised to print out emails and hand them to her (Postman
Pat? although the black and white cat lives here with me……..).
Life is full of
coincidences, and I’d just started writing blog entries again, so off they went
straight away. I had a reason to write now, to keep her supplied. She loved my
cats, she thought I was funnier than a stand up comic (eh?? Must have been the
one about getting bitten by a cat on the market and raising a lump on my head walking into the van door the same week). I told her she was becoming my muse.
A bit of appreciation goes a long long way. And it is clear by now that
encouraging me in the word department has consequences. I’ve started but there
is no prospect of me finishing……..it’s ok, she knew I could talk for England.
For a period of just 3 weeks
there were a couple of text sessions and some emails to her. She said she had
never expected it but she might be able to go home for Christmas. I made her
promise to try to read emails at home so I could carry on sending them. I secretly
crossed my fingers. My dad was in a hospice and meant to come home for
Christmas day.
So it was not really a
surprise yesterday when I got a text from an unfamiliar number,– Mick telling
me he is sorry he has bad news for me. She died on the way home on Friday, (20th Dec 2013) but she
made it as far as the garden. My eyes fill with tears, my heart goes out to her
family, and my thoughts range over how lucky I am she was part of my life, will
I get back for the funeral, is that bush she told me a funny story about years
ago still in the front garden??
Reanna followed my life
including the ups and downs and removals to Spain for getting on 12 years I reckon, and is fully
credited with settling the title for the book I co-wrote chronicling a very
unusual friendship. I was telling her about it and the debate over possible titles, and
the way I described it, she just stood there and said, well – that’s your title
then, and so it was. She gave us the title and we dedicated it to my dad, who died on
Christmas Eve 2008.
