LUCY

LUCY
　
Her look was clean but is wasn’t natural if you see what I mean.
Was she dead or alive? I wasn’t sure.
No one singular caring nurses face would come into the picture. Rather there were small feelings of absence dashing in and around a whole central mother ship of absence.
Her poor pink chest plate obeyed the rhythm of the respirator.
Quite a few well intended friends or the persons they came with had suggested that it might help to talk or hold her hand or strike her with something locally iconic because that’s what you say at times like this! except that………I actually believed for a moment that I may have a chance, some peculiar bead of optimism in me thought I might be able to have her glow to the return of my estranged idiosyncratic familiarities and then I saw of myself that I was merely immersed in hope. So then we were looking at a cadaver and the tiny hope dashed was so very different to the tiny hope existing.
Lucy had gone out on the Friday evening to what she called one of her poof’s parties. These guys mostly based up in Kempton are in the business of overdoing it. It seems as though last Friday night was no exception. A cluster of whispers and say so says that they’d been at it on the coke and the mdma and a new legal but actually worse kind of mdma and shit loads of booze and that a few of them late and into the early hours had decided to take her dog for a walk and that was a twenty minute endeavour and that when they returned to the flat, Lucy, who had ‘gone to sleep’ or ‘crashed out’ was actually found not to be breathing and was blue. Apparently one of them then tried in vain to revive Lucy with
All that anxious thumb pads up and down on the bread bin malarkey and so many seconds this and so many seconds that and they did it earnestly for twenty minutes but nothing, not a jot of response and she was rapidly admitted into the intensive care department of the central Sussex hospital.
That’s where I came to see her lying there with nasal tubes and nastiness.
In the waiting area in the hospital there were a dozen or so of us waiting to go in and see her and the hospital permitted two of us at a time. Her Mother, Father and brother along with myself and some other close friends made up the dozen. Some I remembered and others were more recent an addition to Lucy’s life than from the time when I had last lived in Brighton or regularly seen Lucy. They all seemed a good sort and subsequently affected by it all. The first pair were invited in, Adam (A great mutual friend of Lucy’s and me) suggested that Lucy’s Mum and myself go in first, we both of us quickly readily agreed. That takes it back to the tubes and the nastiness. I held her hand, joked and gestured and upon leaving gently kissed her forehead. Lucy’s Mother Ann and myself returned to the waiting room expecting the staff to wave in the next pair, but that was cut short by a Doctor coming out to us to talk, She told us,’ That’s it I’m afraid!’ and although that up until that point we’d all had merely miniscule hope, it was at least hope, and the finality of having it removed brought an understandable wave of sadness over us all and some gave vent to emotion whilst others dealt with the moment differently which is how people are.
Adam rang last week to say that the funeral will be delayed at least until late October ,late October!?
The police don’t seem too satisfied that drugs are what killed her. Her life long friend Jo Ward emailed today to say she’s using the first two lines of an old song of mine to begin an anecdote that‘ll be paid lip service on the day, and the day is even looking like going into November now.
One day during the early summer of ninety-six Lucy and me sat on the beach near the West pier with a bottle of ‘Teachers‘. We looked upon the neglected relic that was the West Pier with the same aspect of slight sadness that day as we were in the habit of. The day was overcast and we happily filled with euphoria together as friends enjoying a devil may care day as the bottle emptied. Events like these happen between people during the late part of their early times together and it is not that both of you are unwitting of the fact that the future will soon by the very nature of things change down a gear or two into unfortunately more responsible and less exciting times. We were both very amused with the ensuing hilarity back at her flat in Lansdowne Street where Lucy in particular was unable to identify which of the two rooms we were in.’ Let’s go into the lounge’ she suggested ‘We’re in it’ I pointed out ‘No, the room with the telly in it’ she retorted ‘ Yes there it is look’ I said pointing to the said telly and then when she saw it we both burst into a very enjoyable fit of wheezing hysterics.
Lucy Molsom was an intelligent, astute, independent, creative, individual, resourceful wonderful human being and I shall miss her very much. She was fantastically stubborn and opinionated which won her the respect and affection of her friends and associates as much as her humour and wit.
Lucy’s funeral finally came on 12th November this year 2009.
It was good to see old friends. If I remember correctly you were as atheistic as many or at least as agnostic as me but……….God bless you anyway Lucy. Your friend Tim xxxxxxx
　
　
　
TIM SANSOM 21 ST DECEMBER 2009