Death a kick in the guts
I’ve had a pretty lucky life when it comes to death. A friend died in a car accident a very long time ago and my Grandpa died when I was living in London. Of course these hurt but I wasn’t there, close up, seeing it happen.
Recently, a friend’s mum died and boy has it kicked me in the guts. I met Vanessa about 30 years ago when I was (undoubtedly) an annoying teenager.
Her daughter, Emma, and I went to school together. On our first day at high school we sat next to each other due the alphabetised seating arrangement of our class. Emma had a fringe that resembled a grocer’s awning while mine was asymmetrical and peroxided blonde.
I don’t remember what Em and I bonded over but it can’t possibly have been hair.
Soon I was spending almost every day at their house. Her mum eventually gave me a key and I guess her siblings just had to accept I was performing a sort of adoption-by-stealth.
She said she wished she knew the fate of the Cathedral. It seemed a particularly Christchurch dying wish.
Then last year Vanessa got cancer and this year she died.
I must admit that for a long time I was one of those people who somehow found reasons not to visit. I hadn’t realised how quickly it would take her.
Then Emma started saying things like ‘‘Mum wants to see you and if you want to see her lucid, you better come soon’’.
So I did. I always loved my friendship with Vanessa. After the quakes I’d lost my house and bounced from one housesit to another. A few times I stayed in her spare room, forcing rent on her against many protestations. The rent situation sat uncomfortably with Vanessa so she started washing and changing my sheets every weekend. I quite liked that.
In the evenings, we would sit and laugh over a glass of wine. We spoke about our families, about years past and years yet-to-live. We talked about pets. I think she might have been my crazy cat lady inspiration – but then again, she liked dogs as well. I would explain to her that I did not enjoy classical music and she would shake her head in dismay.
Last time I saw her awake, she was sitting up in bed. I hopped in beside her and we giggled like schoolgirls.
She said she wished she knew the fate of the Cathedral. It seemed a particularly Christchurch dying wish. It was typical Vanessa.
Two days later, she was asleep for the last time, surrounded by her five adult kids and various grandchildren. We all got to hold her little hand and stroke her hair and whisper a few secrets into an ear we hoped might still have been listening.
She died less than two hours later. Even then, her hand was still held and her hair still stroked, a life rich in the areas that truly matter.
Death and grief are strange fellows. If there is inevitability to life, it is that we all die so I’ve wondered a lot lately why it isn’t easier for the living to handle.
From this limited experience, I believe having the body around for a few days afterward seemed comforting. A sort of bridge helping you to believe a person really is gone.
This week I found a little card she’d sent me. She often did that. Thanking me for things I didn’t know I’d done. They were usually somehow related to something I’d written in my column. The night after she died, Emma told me she’d found a scrapbook of my columns. I don’t reckon she would have thanked me for this one.
Bye Van. You were so important and special to me.