The end of a strange year of restrictions for a couple of months, busy at work, wet weather, a quick trip by plane to Melbourne for niece Ellie’s 21st, I was caught while running in a hail storm which resulted in half of our small gum tree falling on our neighbour’s roof. And then last week a colleague, Kylee, died suddenly, from a heart attack.
She was not much older than me, exercised regularly and wasn’t overweight. She sat near me for the past year and we would say hello and have a chat, and her son would come in regularly at the end of his Year 12 school day. Her older daughter had embarked on her own career. Her youngest son, aged 15, lived with his father and had a tumultuous relationship with her – her ex partner made this hard with his hostility towards her. I found her friendly and warm. She also had a lovely smile.
I was at work on the day she died but as we had moved recently, she no longer sat near me, so I hadn’t seen her. Our colleagues said she had been fine all day, then at around 4.40pm she told another colleague she felt unwell. He asked if she wanted an ambulance called and she said no, she just wanted her mother to pick her up, who lived nearby. He walked her to the car and I don’t know what happened after that, though they were heading to the hospital.
I’m sorry I won’t be able to go to her funeral because we’ll be at the beach for the summer break. Those around her gathered on our floor the next day in shock and disbelief, and shared stories about what a kind person she was, with what a good sense of humour. One of them relayed the story Kylee had told about her ex partner ringing her up once to say that he was getting married. ‘’That’s nice’, she said, ‘who to?’ Í don’t know’, he said, ‘but it will be someone who isn’t mean with a fat arse.’ She had roared with laughter. It was a particularly strange thing to say to someone when he had been the one who had left her.
Her university friend who works in my team had had the day off on the day we found out, to be with her mother having an end-of-life operation, so I rang her the following day on her scheduled day off. She was driving to Sydney and in a good mood because her mother’s operation had gone well. I thought it was potentially unsafe to tell her something so upsetting when she was driving alone, but there was no way of getting out of it once I had said that I had something important to tell her, so I asked her to pull over. She cried and cried and was too wrung out to work on the last two days.
The news that there had been a potential COVID case visiting our floor on the day we found out was pretty insignificant after that. In fact this tragedy has put things in perspective. People really can be here one day and gone the next.
I had a precautionary COVID test and my COVID booster shot between then and Christmas. We saw Duncan and Becky, who is pregnant, for the first time in two years, and had a lovely Christmas lunch, with a rich range of hors d’oeuvres ranging from cucumbers, carrots and dip, fig biscuits and cheeses, grapes and quince paste; and then leaf and grain salads, lamb and ham, eggplant with herbs; and a fruity plum pudding with white sauce and cream. The girls enjoyed playing ping pong, then playing with nerf guns, and we all had fun with the Stealing Kris Kringle and trivia game. I am grateful that our family is safe and happy.
We are packing up tonight, before the long drive in which we’ll listen to podcasts and unwind. Two weeks of rest, two weeks working remotely, and a week with my family and the girls at the South coast. I wonder what 2022 will bring.
