Friday 11 February 2011

The hairs stood up on the back of my neck...

I wanted to put a buffer between the last poem, which is very serious, and the next, which is very silly, so I thought that I would tell you about a strange thing that happened yesterday. First, some background: Pauline, to whom the last poem was dedicated, had already had a difficult life. Just before Christmas her daughter first killed her two young children (Pauline's grandsons) then killed herself. The word tragedy is undoubtedly overused but this was without doubt tragic, and Pauline was left to cope with it. Having already had heart surgery last year, Pauline died last week; the Daily Mail reported that she died 'of a broken heart'. So what made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck? While I was typing yesterday's poem 'For Pauline' into the blog, my phone whistled to tell me that I had a new text message. When I'd finished at the computer I went to the phone and the screen showed me that I had one new text- from Pauline. It took me a few minutes to regain my equilibrium but when I opened it it was the details of her funeral arrangements. No doubt her surviving daughter, loath to repeat the conversation many times, sent the message from her mother's phone to 'all contacts'. So that's it....

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