Life – Linda Walker

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER`

Today is Natalie Klassans 48th birthday.  It’s on my mind as I wake up and get ready to go to a writers workshop, quietly shitting my pants at stepping outside my comfort zone and putting myself out there, and it’s on my mind because I know I can’t call so she can tell me (again) how shit my voice is as I try to sing Happy Birthday to her.  I know I won’t be having drinks with her tonight, and our days of getting drunk and laughing at dating stories are of the past now- there is no way for me to reach her since she left this earth. It’s on my mind.

Nat would have been 48 today, maybe she still is turning 48 in heaven? I don’t know how it works up there – or if there is heaven at all. Actually scrap that turning 48 idea, she would have way preferred to stay young and hot, even though it was only three years ago, its still three years, she is forever mid 40’s now and not late 40’s.  I can hear her in my head telling me this.

It’s one of the reasons I am here today at a writers workshop, one of the reasons for a lot of things.

Three years ago she got given the prognosis of two to four weeks to live. Aggressive cancer, blah blah. You know the drill.  I remember getting the call, I was living in NZ at the time and she lived in Melbourne.  I was frantically trying to make plans to get to her immediately and in her usual way she was making jokes, “I have weeks yet…weeks, don’t rush!”. Then we would cry.  In the end I was so glad I rushed. When life throws you curve balls, you don’t always catch them. Some days you don’t even get to finish playing the game.

It took three days for me to get there in the end, the curse of living on the wilds of the west coast of the south island of NZ, I drove through snow and ice, took two plane rides and car ride then I was at the hospital, at the side of a women who looked radically different already.  I recall she never actually made it home, back to her bedroom, her cat, her life.

She went into the hospital to get results and never came out.  Seven days was all it took. Seven days and she was gone.  From when they told her to when she left. Seven days.

I could of course tell you so much about Nat cause she was one of my best friends, how she ate a piece of chocolate cake every day before she went the gym, how she played the clarinet and sang like an angel, how she told the filthiest jokes and had the dirtiest mind, how she was a fiercely independent woman and used to inspire me to want to be more like her…but I am not here to talk about that. What really gets me is the seven days.

How we used to talk about what we would do “one day”.  Everyone does I guess.  I floundered after she went.  I couldn’t fathom what I could take from this, I felt I had to find something or I felt like it would be in vain, losing her, such a vibrant person. Then it hit me. That we think we have forever, but our forever could be seven days.

I base a lot of things around that now. Nat doesn’t know it (or heck, maybe she does from wherever she is) but that thought helped me leave an unhealthy relationship.  Would I do this if I had seven days? Is that what I would accept? Is this who I would be? No.

So today is Natalie Klassans birthday.  She will not be given another seven days on this earth, but I might be.  So I left a relationship, I took a different job, I moved out from my partner, I am broke as hell but I am happy, all because I didn’t want to waste whatever my forever is, because I know forever doesn’t last as long as I thought. And of course I signed up for this class, because I miss writing and I want to do more of it, and If I have only seven days I have at least spent a part of that telling people not to waste theirs either.  You think you have forever. You don’t.

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