The Meaning of Life

In my experience life has a habit of creeping up and smacking you around the face when you are not looking. In the last week or so there has been a whole collection of worrying and upsetting things, but one thing has pushed all the others into the background. A very special friend of mine is terribly ill and the outlook has been bleak in the extreme. It made me very sad and every time the phone rang or a message arrived I expected the worse, but yesterday afternoon there was a tiny hint of hope and I am clinging to that.


The thing that makes this friend very special is that she has a very different take on the world because she has a learning disability. We have had so many happy times together and a few sad ones too. When my first husband died she didn't struggle for words like everyone else, she said exactly what she felt with tears rolling down her face, that meant such a lot to me. Mostly I remember the good times and the crazy moments that always managed to bring a smile to my face. There was the time when she got a new chest freezer, among all the usual items she froze a whole cucumber and a tinned steak and kidney pie. We laughed so much when I told her they would make excellent weapons but they would be useless if defrosted! 


I remember one day when we were out shopping she queued up in Boots to pay for some shampoo and when she got to the counter she announced to the cashier "If I hadn't been a twin I would have been a triplet" it made perfect sense to her but the look on the cashiers face was priceless. One day we went to London by train, we travelled on the underground, we went to Madame Tussauds then we looked at the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street. By the time we were heading home on the train I was exhausted but she was still full of beans. We had seen and done so much, but when I asked what she had liked most she said "I liked that man in Mc Donalds". Then there was the time when she got a new budgie, she wanted to name it after me, but since she and I have the same name she wanted the to give the budgie a different name so she called it Nissan after my car! Not long after we first met she got very upset with her work placement because they listened to the wrong radio station. I tried to tell her that it wasn't such a big deal, but she was in a bad mood and she said "anyway there is too much f---ing bad language in that place". We laughed so much about that and in a strange way it made her feel better about her work.


She asks very little of life, she accepts people on face value, she doesn't judge or tell people what to do but she takes great pleasure in her friends and in the simple things in life that so many of us take for granted. I hope with all my heart that she will get well again, the world needs more people like her.