Dearest Florence
You left before we could talk properly.
I can't help but think you died thinking me indifferent to our
friendship. I am sorry I didn't say these words to you when you were
alive. This guilt has eaten the little happiness I had and these many
months on, I still feel burdened by it.
I was so mad with you! You tried to
leave this world again and again. You seemed to be happier and then a
drinking session crushed you to try and kill yourself. That last
attempt, left me furious with you, mainly because within two days,
you were back to normal and acting like nothing had happened, whilst
we were all still reeling from the reality that you were very close
to dying that time. I had to have space to process how I felt, I
punished you by not taking you to the Levellers gig that week –
well it was 3 days after you'd nearly died, I wasn't ready to deal
with that. We were all fried to fuck, we didn't know what to do or
how to do it. So instead of talking to you about it, which I'd
always been able to do, I just stepped back. Remember that message
you sent me? 'How can you complain about your friends abandoning
you?!' You just didn't get it and I didn't want to say anything that
I'd regret, so I said nothing of substance. Suicide is the ultimate
abandonment. You had tried to abandon me, your world that loved you
and I was fucking mad! Mad that such a wonderful person could think
so badly of herself that she would do this over and over again.
Months went by, you were driving within a few miles of my house
fetching slabs and other junk, on your little adventures but didn't
pop in. I was working and exhausted from it. I don't know how that
much time went by but it did. You were always working, we only saw
each other briefly. Yet you seemed to be on top of it, loads happier
in yourself, more resolved to a future. Plans were made, plans
didn't happen.
I'd started doing craft fairs and was
manic getting things made and set up. The last message you sent me,
I was at a craft fair and the signal was bad and then customers
turned up and I forgot to reply straight away. 'Love you xxx' it
said. You deactivated your facebook (normal) so I couldn't reply, so
I whatsapp'd you a message a couple of days later 'are you still
alive?'. You weren't. You'd gone. You'd left us. Only we didn't
know, we weren't to know for two weeks. You never went silent for
more than a week, we wondered where you'd gone. You'd gone. Then the
world around me fell apart. You were the glue that held our
dysfunctional group together. It just exploded. You were gone.
Instead of being able to grieve over you dying, I had to defend
myself from accusations, lies and suddenly having no support group
anymore – it had exploded and I was the bad guy.
I nearly didn't go to your funeral. I
was so full of anxiety at seeing the fragments of our friend group, I
nearly puked in the car on the way there. It was as bad as I thought
it would be, I was practically blanked, I was excluded and if I
hadn't spotted they were leaving and waved, I wouldn't have even got
a goodbye. So much for friends. Now I'm mad again. The service was
excellent though, your family laughed warmly at the memories shared
of you. The eulogy said things that I had said weeks before and been
shot down for, so I felt vindicated that my perception of you, was
the same as your family's. I held it together at the funeral, seemed
chipper but I was destroyed. They went off without me and I just
cried my eyes out in the car and rang S. On the way to her
house, I found myself at yours. All your things were just heaped up
in the garden, the little wooden art doll I used to position into
funny poses, was laying there. So I took it, my treasure and reminder
of the times I spent at yours. Molly came mewing over, she never came
near me before but there she was, wanting a fuss and cuddles. My
heart just broke seeing Florence Towers and no Florence in it. All you
had built had gone. I found myself in Market W, so popped in to
see B. No one knew you'd died you see, I wanted to tell him, to
talk to him about that thing that happened. He didn't know and he
was upset. We talked over a cuppa and I told him about the messages
and that you'd never thought anything untoward had happened. He never
thought you had, so you had worried over nothing. And that was the
thing wasn't it. People had filled your head with gossip and
uncertainty about the people around you. Then you got pissed and
manic and over thought it all... that's when random messages and
posts happened. Followed by mass deletion and deactivation. You
were such a brilliant mess. I miss you so much. I miss not being
able to pop in or phone you up or read your random shit on facebook.
I miss everything you were and was. I feel like you died thinking we
didn't care for you anymore, that we didn't want to be friends. I
was still mad, I couldn't process how I felt, I wanted it to be not
real, I wanted to avoid difficult conversations, I wanted to pretend
it had never happened... and I wanted to protect myself from when it
inevitably did happen again.
It was a Thursday, that's what H (daughter) said when I asked her when you'd died. It was a Thursday. What was I
doing? I was at a Steely Dan gig, it was pants, you'd probably have
liked it lol. 'Head injury... think it was suicide'. I don't know how
you died, I don't want to but I do. I don't want to focus on how your
beautiful life ended and imagining it, will consume me. But I am
consumed now, by guilt of not being a better friend to you at the
end. I was mad. Now I'm empty with grief.
Your send off at the festival was lovely,
albeit awkward because they still believed I'd done wrong. I had a
lovely chat with your daughter and family and I told her everything.
She said I hadn't done anything wrong and that she hadn't said
anything of the sort to me or K. I also found out all the
lovely lies K had been spreading about me, so much for her
declaration of me being 'one of her best friends'. So H vindicated me, those who had supported me, were told and I felt
happier. I blocked K from my life when I got home and the others have
had very little interaction with me since you died. S was
always there and C is the only one who rings me for chats.
You have been gone six months now. Only
in this last month have I started to grieve for you. I'm still mad
but at myself now for succumbing to my bastard anxiety.
I love you Florence, I miss you so much.
I am sorry I was not a better friend at the end. I doubt it would
have stopped you leaving but that doesn't stop me thinking it. I
feel you around me a lot, when I go in the charity shops and the gelato
place. All I have is memories and photographs of our brief time as
kindred friends.
I will write again. I should have
before. Avoidance... gotta let it go ;)
All my love always
