I'm well behind in posting my PADs and in commenting, and as I've mentioned previously that's largely due to work. And work is largely to do with the lack of assistant. I'll catch up with both in due course but this one is being posted on the day, since the day has relevance.
We meet people in our workplaces. In the civilian world at least these people drift in and out given that the only thing we have in common is the carpet we walk on and the signatory on our paycheque. You'll know all about someone's domestic life when you see them day in and day out. Then they move jobs or you do, and 5 years later you wouldn't recognise them in the street.
Very occasionally there are exceptions.
Around 15 years ago I moved to a new position, assisting in administering an enterprise information system. The administrator was a woman who was born in New York, raised in New Jersey, had a broad southern accent from having lived in Texas for many years, and had recently married an Australian. We didn't have a huge amount in common; we both liked "critters" (as she called them) but hers was more a passion (volunteering for a wildlife rescue service, for instance), mine an interest. We both had a particular interest in canines though inexplicably she preferred Weimaraners over Boxers. She loved "scooba dahvin'"; in later years I would send her links to every reported shark attack and tell her to stay out of the damn water. She was deeply spiritual, my bookcases are heavy with Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking et al. I got her to briefly create a PBase account but in the end she decided to put her galleries on Facebook {sigh...}, though at least I got her to buy Canon and to eventually eschew the automatic modes for AV, TV and Manual. Never did get her to shoot RAW rather than .jpg, though.
But something still "gelled". When the business we worked for restructured and she moved on we still wouldn't go more than a couple of days without being in touch in some way or other. A couple of years later I was retrenched and she reached out and pulled me into another job as her assistant, getting my stalled career and finances back on track. A couple of years after that she took (very) early retirement, moved up the coast, and I moved into her role.
When my own assistant moved on I offered her the chance to come back to work for me part time (commuting down and staying with friends 3 days per week) so that she could earn a bit of extra cash to support the trips that she liked to make. (Such as to Africa to see lots of exotic critters, or to elephant rescue farms in south east Asia.) This she did until March 2011 when I expected to see her the following week but instead got a call from her telling me that the niggling health issues that she'd been having was diagnosed as stomach cancer. Operations, chemotherapy, radiation etcetera followed and the cancer went into remission, though the long term prognosis for that type was not good. (10% survival rate for 5 years.) I kept the job open for her as I still wanted her to have something to come back to (and to fund her overseas adventures) and eventually she did, albeit working remotely. This helped cover another trip to Africa last year.
Unfortunately the cancer returned at the end of last year. I still kept her job open for her even though I was barely keeping my head above water because... well, it's what you do for friends. Not having time to do things like PADing properly is a small price to pay. And of course I was not going to accept the prospect of her not being around until every last option was exhausted and reality loomed like a brick wall in front of a freight train; until then there was always hope, as I see it. Unfortunately by a bit over a month ago it became apparent that this time there wouldn't be a comeback. I got to see her one last time when she came back early from her final holiday to Norfolk Island and was in a hospital here in Sydney before returning home for her last couple of weeks.
She died yesterday morning.
Life goes on. Or sometimes it doesn't, clearly. But the sun still rises. For the preceding 17,519 times it rose on a world that had in it someone who I was, for over 5,700 of those sunrises, proud to call my friend. This morning, day 17,520 after her birth, it didn't. And it won't ever again. But just as the light from this sunrise and lighthouse never really vanishes but simply moves away from us, neither does the light from her having once been here.
