Losing a penpal/email-pal

 Hi there

I had been writing my friend in England for 58 years.  We started as young pen-pals, moved on to being email pals, and perhaps two or three times a year we rang each other.  We met once - I stayed with Irene when I visited England the year we both turned 60.  

 Together we'd gone through the psychedelic 60's, the angst of romance, middle age, hobbies that came and went, job restructures, retirement, our beloved pets, back aches, growing old....

I sent her an email a couple of months ago.  She didn't reply.  This wasn't like Irene; she usually answered me within a week.

I sent her another email about three weeks later.  No answer.  Maybe Irene was in hospital; she'd been talking about going in for an eye operation?

I sent her two more emails over the coming month.  Nothing.  Was her computer broken?

I phoned her three times.  Her phone number made a discontinued sound.   I wondered if she'd moved to a rest home, she'd had one or two falls lately.

We had never told each other our in-case-of-emergency contact.   I knew she had relatives in the area so I tried hunting them up.   I looked up obituaries.  At the same time, I searched Wellington souvenir shops for Irene's Christmas present....

I looked up Irene's name on the web.  I found a photo of her, taken a couple of years ago.  It was at a luncheon for a senior group. The photo was of her and a volunteer from that group.

So I emailed the group.

Within hours, I had a reply.

Irene had passed away two months before.  Her dogs were given to her relatives, her house cleared out, and nobody had let me know....

I was devastated.  I don't think I'll ever get over that I didn't know what had happened to my friend for all that length of time.  Someone should have got in touch with me-

But it's come home to me very clearly that both Irene and I are to blame.   We - well, older people, especially - we should be leaving a list of who, and when, and how to contact our friends, to let them know of our passing.

So, everyone out there, please-please-please leave contact addresses, email names, phone numbers in a prominent place, like on a hall table, or with your will, or by the phone, with instructions to please ring these people if something should happen to you. 

I am so sad that I didn't grieve for my friend at the time of her passing...

Life Into Death Into Life    -   by Myra Reeves

It was a broken bird,

Hurt wings folded, forgotten how to fly,

Lost the blue air, the beyond,

Grounded.

Twittering against the healing hold of kind hands,

The voice saying 'Be still',

Be at peace.

So it became at last.

Now they have opened wide

With what sweet grace!

The bird flew straight to the eye of heaven.

It is flying, flying, flying

Into unnameable joy................

R.I.P Irene.   Just you flap your wings like mad to get to that "unnameable joy", you hear me?!!  

See ya!

T