I Was The Protector

A friend died a few days ago, the day before New Years Eve. Cancer

Like that explains her all

We grew up together. I was six when she was born

We played Pirates in the tree house and picked rations of ‘Banana Passionfruit’ and mandarines filled with seeds; me, my sister, her and her sister. We came in that order

I remember the mixture of lightness and dark in their house

Crinkled sunlight through the old, frosted windows; dust and shadows by the piano; political cartoons about Kakadu in the loo and old postcards; the warmth of sun on their enclosed verandah and picking flowers together in the garden; bike pants, sneakers and gap teeth

When birthday parties came and our families joined together, us kids playing on the twilight hill of the bowling club while orders were settled

I was the eldest

I was the protector

I remember when Maree began primary school, then high school- six years between us, two more than her sister

I was always far ahead

I remember her pony camp and when she wanted only to be called Elizabeth (though it wasn’t her name)

There was a comfort to afternoons we spent wandering their block of land etched in rainforest

I moved away for university

But we still did things in the holidays

Inaugrual birthdays and often Christmas day. The talk was different and the ‘games’ not the same

I used to write to her on Facebook when she started uni. She came Dux of her year and chose engineering

She seemed happy

Later I remember a first boyfriend

I came home less for holidays by then but we still caught up on birthdays

The common tie was home.

She moved to Newcastle for work

Still had her boyfriend

I remember a few years ago my mother told me she had been ill

Eventually it was cancer. We hadn’t seen each other in a while by then. I hoped she would get well

Life was busy. It was for her too

Her status updates showed travel, friends, family

Her hair got shorter

But she still looked beautiful in her wedding photos

She glowed

This Christmas my mother told me the doctors said there was nothing more they could do

A family Christmas, she was sitting and looked swollen in pictures

But so content. With all her family there

She died the day before New Years Eve. I heard after work the next day

I was the eldest of us. I still am, but there is a hole where she was

I couldn’t protect her. I sent love to her mother and sister through Facebook- funny how times change for a family who lived so long without the internet, or even a television

It feels inadequate and foreign with distance

Clumsy. I guess death itself is a distance  and the people left behind must find their way too in grief

I still remember when we were young

But I couldn’t protect her. As the oldest I always thought I’d go first

As I always had

But in time the natural order frays

Births, marriage, death

Anyone is fair game