Last summer during our holiday my older son, 2.5 years old, spotted a dead fish in the fountain. Immediately he ran to me and my husband: “Mami, Papi, the fish is “kaputt”, we need to fix it!!” Bless our children and their innocence.
Last week I lost a friend to cancer, a wonderful woman, and mum of a two-year-old little boy.
We met when we were 10 in school and spent the most beautiful, fun, carefree years together. Oh our hopes for the future, our dreams, our hobbies. Our innocence. After secondary school we chose different paths and slowly grew apart, life took over, new friends, first boyfriend, university, jobs, life abroad for me. At first, we always made time to see each other, then to speak, then we kept in touch via email, she was not a fan of social media. I knew she was well and she was there. Then kids came, and the concept of busy took on a new meaning. I knew she was happy, her baby was doing well, my mum met her a few months ago at the post office in their hometown, agreed we would catch up as soon as possible. But really, I had not seen her in years. Recently I had found some diaries and the cutest letters we used to write to each other. I made a mental note to show her all this as soon we had time, on my next trip to Milan, or maybe in the spring, as soon as the kids were a bit older. She was not physically present in my life anymore but she was always there, in the corner of my happy memories, as a friend put it. I thought we would have had time to sit there at some point and chat about our stories of all those years ago. To have the kids playing together, to share experiences on motherhood. I thought we had time so I was just waiting to see her. Waiting and putting things off.
Until yesterday. I only knew two days after the funeral. She is gone. She was 35. She was diagnosed in July and died last week, three months only, nothing could be done. Beyond the shock, the sadness for her life cut so short and for a little boy who will have to grow up without his mum, I feel so sorry for all those times we could have seen each other, could have made time, could have hugged each other one last time.
A lot of things can wait, but I will never let time go by again without doing everything I can to see the great people of my past and my present whenever I can. I just won't wait.
M.