Hi there
This is the second time I have tried to post this blog, must not be my thing today. I shall apologise now for my ranting......
I went to work today thinking I would email my friend Jeanette to make a time to have a coffee early in the new year. Got to work, collected today's newspapers and went to the office to get started for the day. Got my computer up and running and went off the make a coffee and read the paper. As usual I would start at the front and read to the back page including the births, deaths and marriage columns. Too my suprise I read that a Jeanette had died on Christmas day. I must have read the notice about three times. I went to my computer and checked her details on the data base and sure enough they were the same. It was not cancer (though she had has thyroid cancer years ago and was treated successfully) that caused her death but pneumonia, she went to hospital on the Tuesday and was taken into intensive care Christmas morning and died later that day. To be honest I still cannot believe that she is gone, she was only 66. We only had lunch together a couple of weeks ago and discussed catching up in the New Year when she returned to Dunedin.
Anyway I managed to get time off work to attend her funeral, which I must say was very fitting and beautiful. Not as many people there as most are still away and will have no idea that she has passed on. There was discussions that a Memorial Service will be arranged sometime after the holidays had ended and everyone is back at work etc.
I met Jeanette in 2001 when I was almost to the point of suicide, mainly due to the cancer that was not discovered for another two years. Jeanette was my counsellor at that time and when she stopped practising we remained friends, regularly meeting for lunch, coffee etc. I met her family and many of her friends today and must say that I am going to miss her very much.
Life is so short for some.
Take care everyone
Jacqui
FormerMember
That is really sad news. The husband of a friend of mine was killed at work in August, in his forties like me; and it just seems so strange to lose somebody who wasn't 'supposed to die'. I still expect to see him in the pub and to get together for that BBQ in the summer.
You will always remember her with affection and that is the way any of us would like to be remembered, but today I do feel for you and this sad loss.
So sorry for your loss, and also sorry about the way you had to find out. It must have been a terrible shock. I expect her family members were too much in shock to contact everybody.
Who knows why some people die young and others (often bastards or wastes of space) go on for ever? One of life's mysteries I fear. At least your friend appears to have had a useful and fulfilled life and not everyone can say that.
So sorry to hear of your shock Jacqui - it must have been a small comfort to be able to attend your friend's funeral.
2008 seems to have been a horrible year for so many people I know - and for me and my extended family it has been majorly awful. Let's hope that 2009 brings us all a measure of respite from whatever we are fighting at the moment - and in a wider view, World Peace would be a miracle considering the fighting going on right now.
No! Life isn't fair - but we deal with it somehow.
I think you're in Dunedin Jacqui (my younger daughter's name) - hope you are enjoying some glorious weather. We are in Auckland and today has been a scorcher!
