All Things Must Pass

Today, I was pottering about, as is my wont, when I got a telephone call. "Clare? – Well, how lovely to hear from you". "I have some very bad news, I’m afraid. Mum has died". And with those words, the world changes in an instant. Clare’s mother is (was…) my oldest friend. Sue and I had known each other since we were children, forty-five years ago, back on the Isle of Man.

 

She was two years older than me – a huge gap when we first met. She seemed then like someone impossibly worldly wise, and when she left the island to go to university, I longed to hear what it was like, because that was what I wanted to do as well. It seemed to me like an avenue of escape from a society that I instinctively knew would not be one that I would feel at ease in. She was the first person, apart from myself, to whom I admitted I was gay. It seemed like such a burden back then in those times. Sue helped me see that I should just be myself, and not be imprisoned by the homophobic attitudes of the time and place.

 

Sue was diagnosed as having MS, and it was a cruel blow. But she made the best of it, and I never heard her complain, although of course she had regrets at losing her independence. We all watched the disease gradually build its bars of immobility around her. She became a prisoner in her own body, but she kept her spirits high. The thing that she feared most was to lose the keen edge of her mind. For her, the saying that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" was absolutely her view, both for her and for those around her.

 

I’ve lost a good person whom I was privileged to have as a friend. She’s gone far too soon, but at least the bars imprison her no longer. Her memory remains.