Sail Away With Me To Another World

I woke up this morning thinking of my gorgeous, generous friend and the times she and I would sing karaoke. We’d work our way through rock ballads, fabulous country songs, Patsy, Tammy, then Whitney and of course Dolly Parton. My funny friend also introduced me to the delights of Smooth FM and their back catalogue of hideous one hit wonders. A couple of years ago we gatecrashed an 18th birthday party at a pub and then it turned out C knew the family! She was there for me when I became a single mother and I didn’t know how I would cope. She showed me that single motherhood can be fun. Her funeral is today and I don’t think it’s right that two little girls don’t have their fabulous, funny mum any more. At 42 years old my beautiful friend had so much more to give, more books to write, many more songs to sing. Fly free my darling, your spirit soaring with the sun and the twinkling stars, thank you for your friendship. We will walk with your girls through this life. Love you, love always, always love

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.