Finding a lost friend.

It was two weeks a go when a chance meeting happened from which I still haven’t quite recovered. Not that it was so traumatic or dangerous but more a kind of causing a nagging and pulling of heart strings that is not letting me go free. Of course, being free is my daily endeavor. Not all that easy when exposed to a world of past events while rummaging through endless history.  In any case, I will now try give you the details of a conundrum that has been making me restless to the point that my mind keeps returning to this chance meeting. 

I and a friend from longtime ago was staying with me. We decided to do some shopping. And, she like me, are in unity when it comes to shopping. We both go to the same supermarket that excels in  a kind of no nonsense shopping. No acres of hundreds of different washing powders or mile after mile of toilet paper. I buy from a list and never any extra unless it is free. ( Like the occasional sausage at Bunnings.) A week ago, when at the Opera House, there was a large van offering for free, a new yoghurt. The queue was modest so I lined up too and received my yoghurt which I sampled on the ferry together with Milo who got the occasional lick as well. He approved this new yoghurt.

But let us get back to my story.

It was while shopping with the friend and standing in front of a chain shop named ‘The reject Shop’ when this chance meeting started to unfold. Reject Shops are a favorite haunt of mine and I could spend hours checking the different items for sale. They are all brand new and nothing really is reject but it is the power of marketing that draws people in thinking they get second hand things at a much lower cost. I was after some knitting needles (nr 5mm). I found them and was delighted. Most knitting wool balls or ‘cakes’ as they are called come in different size thickness, and each thickness of the yarn has to synchronize with the right pair of needles! Of course, one can ignore the recommended needles and go free and knit with all kinds of thickness needles. It’s not a law!

Helvi

As we were both standing outside the shop, looking in our shopping bags relishing the articles we had bought, a woman stopped in front of me wringing her hands with both her arms waving up and down in a desolate and wretched manner. I had seen her before but was taken aback by her show of utter sadness and grief. She kept looking in my eyes and then she said; ‘ my Graham has gone too now.’ Slowly my memory started to roll back and unfurl  to a degree where the woman and her grief started to finally make sense. She and I, with my late wife Helvi and her late husband Graham had met some three years earlier at the Bowral hospital.

Both Helvi and Graham were getting the chemo therapy for a number of months. Often both Helvi and Graham would sit in the same type of chairs while getting the infusion of different bags of liquid straight up the canister, either in their chests or  arms .There developed a common bond not least helped along by the fact that Helvi from Finland and Graham’s wife from Lithuania shared a background from the same almost forgotten European corner. Thinking back I still see that period as a very happy period. Odd as this might sound but those shared hours and days of harsh chemo were always filled with laughter and closeness. They seemed a happy couple and often she would read to her husband from a book while Helvi would be doing her beloved crossword puzzles.

When she finally stopped her sad sobbing while still in front of the Reject Shop, she told me that she knew Helvi had died well before her Graham did. ‘I went past your house many times in the hope of seeing you,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I felt’ she said in her strong Lithuanian accent. By that time I was all churned up and feeling the terrible plight and the weight that cancer extracts from so many caring partners. All I could do was listen and show some comfort and lame words. I did not even have her name or ask her, and worse, did not have the presence of mind to offer her a coffee, indeed, invite her to come to my place. We just parted company and that’s what happened. It all happened so quickly and the emotions were so high and all engulfing.

And now I want to try and find her. I looked at the obituaries, checked on those with the name ‘Graham.’ She told me while sobbing he died 6 months ago, and also was told by my shopping friend she said she lived in Bundanoon which is about 20km from here. I suppose I could try hanging around the reject Shop hoping to see her again. I have forgotten her name as those meetings at the cancer hospital are now at least 3 years past. Bundanoon has a cemetery and perhaps I should visit it and check on names with Graham. Privacy concerns would prevent the Hospital giving any information.

It refuses to go away and I would dearly like to find her.