Farewells

I have written before about my friend Elizabeth Green, who I have got to know well over the last few years. She was a neighbour, and her dour and overbearing husband meant that we had little to do with either of them until after his death. Since moving away, I have been visiting Liz frequently and enjoying hearing about her life. She was evacuated during the war and spent much of her childhood away from her parents and acting as a surrogate mother to her younger sister Alice. She went to art school in London just after the war and eventually went into teaching. She was forced into marriage because in those days living in sin was not permissible for female teachers. Though she loved John in her own way, neither of them wanted to be married and their relationship was shall we say different. John fell downstairs one night in a drunken state and broke his neck. After that he was housebound and became a burden that she wasn't prepared for. After a number of years of suffering he died and Liz was left in her large house filled with paintings and arthritic hands that ensured that there would be no more paintings to be done. In recent years she has spent her days in front of her TV, chain smoking, becoming more and more agorophobic and waiting for the inevitable.
This week there was a gas leak in her house and she had to be evacuated...again...... This time to an old folks home and from there to hospital. Like a fish out of water she became confused and disoriented and sadly last night she died. I will miss her.