A Sad Day. The Dirty C Word.

You know the feeling of your stomach dropping when you realised that you've lost something you really love, has sentimental value and also expensive? Well it happened to me on Saturday. I opened my sun glass case to find no sunglasses in it. I thought hard and realised I haven't worn it since Thursday. I hoped that it was somewhere at home or in the car but it wasn't. The last place I haven't looked was my desk at work, until this morning. It wasn't there. There's a good chance I either left it on the train but most likely in the fitting room when I tried on dresses. I called the store but nobody has handed it in. I didn't expect anyone would. It was a birthday gift from my parents last year and I really loved it. They're similar to this

I was pretty down for most of the day, you'd think someone had died. I moped through work, through grocery shopping, through picking up Bubby, through the drive home and I was about to mope through preparing dinner until I decided to check my phone for calls and messages. That's when I was given a harsh perspective that slapped me back to an even more painful reality. I was so preoccupied with mourning my sunglasses that I didn't realise I had received a message a couple of hours before. It was from the husband of my dear friend, Kat, informing her friends that she passed away peacefully in her sleep after a long but courageous battle with cancer. I stood staring at my phone reading the message over and over for a good 10 minutes completely numb. Even though we knew it was coming and I've said my goodbye it was still hard to imagine and even more difficult to accept. I called hubby but couldn't get the words out so talked about dinner and Bubby instead. I called another one of our close friends talked for a little bit like normal before the floodgates opened. I wasn't upset that she has passed, she was ready and she's in a better place now. She lived life the fullest and she had no regrets. I was sad for what she had to leave behind, a husband and a young daughter. How do you explain to a two year old that her mummy isn't coming back? How does a grieving husband cope when his daughter just wants her mum? It breaks my heart.

Apologies for being morose. I try to keep things light around here but there's no making light of this.

Goodbye, my dearest Kat. Thanks for the great memories, the friendship, taking turns sleeping on the couch during the many all nighters in the lab trying to finish experiments and our theses, the shared love of Jane Austen, Mr Darcy, ballet and sangria. Rest in peace.