The death of a friend

When we downsized to our new house four years ago, Ann and Helen kindly came to help me unpack the kitchen.  We worked hard for several hours and at the end of the day we were all tired.

“I think that’s enough for today,” I said.

But I had reckoned without Ann’s characteristic of being a completer/finisher.  It was one of the things that made her so effective, but at that moment, I could have done without it.

“Let’s just leave it now.”

But she was determined to finish the job.  And because she was tired, a dish slipped from her fingers and got chipped.

The dish was part of a set, so I kept it.  But every time I used it, the chip annoyed me a little.

However, this summer, Ann suffered a terrible horse-riding accident, and after three weeks in a coma, she died.

She leaves a great gap in all our lives and when her funeral took place, four hundred and fifty people arrived from all over the country to pay tribute to the extraordinary person she was.

It has been too hard to write about, but suffice it to say, that chipped dish is now the most precious one in my house.