[Magdalen] Bad news and prayers

[Marion Thompson]

I have heard from an old old friend, since 1960, in Hereford.  For whatever reason Barbara’s  was one of only seven Christmas cards I sent to England last year.  Apparently it arrived a week after she had had bowel surgery for cancer and she was much cheered by it.  Fast forward to the other day and again for whatever reason her computer coughed up old emails and she realized that she did have my address after all.  So I got an update saying she went off chemo in the summer because her body couldn’t take any more.  It was the sort of communique one would write near the end.

So on Saturday I was ;literally just finishing an email to Barbara, when up popped an incoming message from another friend’s ex- with the subject ‘Tiggy’.  No!  I had stayed with Tiggy in Chobham in August, my last night before flying back to Canada after Jim’s ashes.  We had a wonderful evening, a good catch-up.  We had even shared a house years ago and she was a good friend to Jim when he was over there in recent years  She was due to get a biopsy result on the Monday after I left and we talked at length about the ‘yummy man’ she had met some months before and who was due to visit the next week, too.  And so no news and time passed without further word.  So it has turned out that she is full of cancer, chest, lungs, etc., full of drugs, and is in hospice and not going to come out.

I’m gutted by the news about these two friends who have been in my life, well, forever.

And last Sunday was my last concert singing with The Marion Singers.  After so many decades, it was a difficult day, but I prevailed until the last two bars.  The next three days I felt like I’d been kicked by a mule, such was the emotional hangover.

So here I am, on the brink of 80 y.o., with the words of the psalmist running through my mind, “I see that all things come to an end”.  It’s a bugger, and no mistake.  Sorry if I’m rambling.

Wednesday I’ll drive to Montreal for a several-day visit with my kids and their kids and the great grand-daughter who was born in July.  Lots of jollification culminating in the birthday dinner on the 12th.  So there’s lots to be thankful for and it will be good fun, but oh, I’m so sad.  It has been a rough year.

Marion, a pilgrim



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