On saying goodbye to friends

I always think about my friend, Am, around this time of year.  We met in 2006, when I started working for the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT).  I was their HR manager, and Am was one of my new team.

We didn’t get on at first.  She thought I was too young to manage our team (this isn’t a claim anyone would make now), and she also didn’t think I cared enough about the charity.  She might have been right about that. I took the job because it was a good job, not because I’d be working for the incredible cause I was.

Am was only a few years older than me, but I felt on edge around her.

She argued with me constantly, and I thought she was plotting to take my job.  We didn’t become friends until a few months into my tenure, when the other two people on our team went out on a site visit.

Am and I were silently eating lunch in the office.  We both had sandwiches and cake, so one of us – I can’t remember who – mentioned that we were “taking afternoon tea” together.  That silly, random comment broke the ice.  We did “afternoon tea” in the office at least once a week after that, with ever-fancier sandwiches and dainty iced cakes.  We also started going for cocktails after long days at work.

After I left THT, we carried on meeting up every so often.  Ours was a solid kinship based on cocktails, honest conversation, and a lot of laughter.  Am had a sharp sense of humour, a passion for music, and a legendary giggle.

I last saw her in February 2020, when we met in London to catch up on life.  She told me about her plans to do more travelling (she’d already been half-way around the world and back) and to change her career.  There was a lot more she wanted to do, she said.

I took this photo through the train window, when I was on my way to see Am in February 2020. I didn’t know it’d be the last time I would ever see her.

Sadly, she didn’t get a chance to do any of it.

Am died, quickly and suddenly, of Covid-19 at the end of December.  She’d only just had her birthday.  I still had her Christmas card on my mantelpiece.  And as the end of each year rolls around, I think of her.

(I’m reading this back, thinking ‘I hadn’t meant to write all that!’  But I’m leaving it here as a kind of tribute).

I could say that Am taught me the importance of doing the things you want to do, now.  Why wait for new year’s resolutions, or for spring, or next September?  You don’t know how much time you’ve got left.  No-one does.

But I’m saying goodbye to another friend this year.  My book, the novel formerly known as Small Fish (TNFKASF) is two final-edited chapters away from Actually Being Finished.  As in, I won’t be doing anything more with it.  No tinkering, no editing, no nothing.

(Unless a major publisher wants to take it on and requests changes, but that’s very unlikely.  And even if that did happen, I’d be reluctant to change anything fundamental, for reasons I’ve mentioned before).

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know how long it’s taken me to reach this point with my book.

Years.

Over a decade.

Having a writing project on the go for that long is warm and comforting, even during those times when it’s on the back burner as life happens.  My book was waiting for me, constantly and patiently, to make it better.  It’s been with me through personal storms, and I love it.

 “How do you know when you’ve finished?” is a common book-writing question, for good reason.  There is always something you could tinker with a tiny bit more, if you wanted to.  There’s always a sentence you could improve; a part you could cut.  Your own life warps and shifts in the background, and you find yourself wanting to take your new-found insights and weave them into your work.

In a way, our lives are books constantly being written, until they’re not.

Plans and doing are important, but so are the stories we’re living now, and so are the ones we leave behind.

Imperfect as it is, I’m lucky that I get to decide how, when, and where my novel ends.  Am was with me when the idea formed, and when I started talking about writing it.  She would have been one of the first people I sent a copy to.  Her life ended a long time before it should have, but her stories live on.  They are hers, and as perfect as they could possibly be.