Jan Marshall Author of A Curious State of Affairs (UK & USA) remembers her dear friend, to whom her novel is dedicated.

Gilly Plaskett Broad 1944 – 1992

Below: Music for Gilly on her birthday

Dearest Gilly,

Today would have been your birthday. Of course I don’t need a special day to remember you. You’re here in my mind and my heart so frequently. Sometimes because I see a stranger in the street who by a turn of the head, or a way of laughing, or a smile, or a gesture - will remind me of you. Sometimes the likeness is so real, so believable, I feel it must be you – and I hold my breath until a closer look reveals a stranger. Then I feel newly alone.

Sometimes a book I pick up, that you gave me some forgotten Christmas or birthday long ago, will remind me of you; or a photo from my memory box. Or visiting a place where we spent a happy hour or three will bring you briefly back to me. And then I feel newly sad; newly grief struck. Newly missing you – as if you have only just gone.

Gilly I miss you still and always will. How I’d love to talk with you today and to hear your wise words – you were always so much wiser than me. How I would love to chatter and laugh in our old way – or shed a tear over something that seems important at the time, but isn’t really. How I’d like to have lunch together as we always did on our birthdays. My heart aches to do that. Do you recall how we’d both dress up to “do lunch” and we’d always have a pud, diet or not! Such happy innocent days before we knew how cruel Cancer could be.

Gilly, I still struggle to write about you, or to you, without crying. And some days I feel I have not grieved at all, even with so much time having passed since you died (16 long years now). Some days I’m lucky enough to feel your presence, but mostly I feel lonely without your friendship and you feel absent from my life. The world is a colder place without you in it.

There are no more shared birthday lunches now, full of laughter and private jokes. There are no more cold Winter days spent walking through the woods together with the dogs – or warm Spring days when the Bluebells are out and the air full of their heady perfume – as we pause to sit on our favourite log. Even the dogs are dead now. And the cats too, even my beloved Henry cat has died. I wonder if they are with you in Heaven? I would so like that to be. I dreamt once, just after Henry died – that he was sat on your lap in Heaven – and you were both waiting for me … waiting for me to arrive.

And the music, I cry every time I listen to Neil Diamond. You so loved his music. So I usually listen to him in the car when I’m alone and driving – that way my tears can be private. You bought me the album: Jazz Singer once for my birthday – I still love it.  So I’m dedicating Pretty Amazing Grace to you – for your birthday this year.

There are no more conversations with you about poetry and books and people and family. No more cups of coffee shared in your kitchen or mine, surrounded by the cats and house work that needs doing but can wait. No more renaissance woman, best friend, mentor, confidant.  I am with and yet without you every day. Until we meet again…

Happy Birthday Gilly. “To live in the hearts of those you love is not to die”

Love as always, for ever and beyond death. Wait for me a while … I will join you, eventually …

Jan