Post the Thirty-Eighth - twenty-two

If Nancy Sinatra provided the soundtrack to yesterday and my once again broken chair, today's has come courtesy of Cyndi Lauper. That's because today is my dear friend Lauren Scott's birthday. She would've been twenty-two, and our favourite song to sing together was Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, so I've had it up on Spotify all day. I wrote last year, on her twenty-first, about how difficult I had found it to listen to it without crying, even all these years on.

That hasn't changed - there have still been lots of tears today - but they've somehow had a different quality. Although the grief is present, as I think it always will be, I've also been able to sing my heart out - and, in a funny way, I think that change has come about because of the continued situation with my chair.

The thing with Spotify is that, if you're playing an artist rather than a specific playlist, it automatically cycles through the rest of that artist's tracks. Girls... was followed by True Colours and Time After Time, both of which have resonance from my friendship with Lauren. As best friends do, we got each other through some of our darkest times. She held my hand through my homesickness at boarding school, and I endeavoured to hold hers in hospital - which brings me to the point of this post. The most wonderful thing about Lauren was that, even when she was at her sickest, she refused to let her disability get the better of her. I suppose it was her one form of teenage rebellion - she would choose when it was time. If so, was a good one to choose. It kept her strong and cheekily cheerful, and I now understand that there was a very deliberate choice behind our love of Girls..., whether we knew it then or not. 

To cite the film Inside I'm Dancing, we were very definitely dancing in our heads, or maybe even with our bodies (a little finger tapping surreptitiously on a wheelchair tray) - and laughing good-naturedly in the face of expectation as we did so.) We would notice the difficulties, sure, and pick each other up - but then we'd have a chuckle. That was our unspoken agreement, conveyed in the twinkle of an eye. I like to think the same thing would've happened yesterday when my chair broke again.

So thanks, best pal, for still being here, even if not in sight. It's just like Cyndi sang...I will find you, time after time, year after year, in the memories and the strength that we shared - and, at some point before your twenty-third, with or without my chair, I am determined to come home 'in the morning light'. (However much the appeal of clubbing mystifies me - you were always more fond of parties!) And, when I do, I'll think of you.

Happy birthday - we're lighting a candle tonight.