The last time I met up with my wonderful friend (who I'll call Alice here), we headed to our favourite cafe for lunch. Alice had just been given the 'all clear' following months of chemo for breast cancer and I wanted to buy her lunch to celebrate (and to celebrate me getting my first Old Age State Pension - ouch!!). A woman pushed Alice roughly out of the way in the lunch queue and it shook her up. It shook me up, too. I thought: "How dare she push Alice when Alice has been through hell over the past couple of years?" But, then, I guess she wasn't to know that Alice was so very fragile after all that chemo. Or that, within just 4 weeks, Alice would be dead when the cancer reappeared, suddenly and aggressively.
I told Alice that I'd been pondering recently on the fact that there are good people and bad people in the world. I wondered what made people uncaring, rude or just plain nasty while others are the exact opposite?
We talked about it for a while.
I told Alice that she, herself, was a phenomenal woman, like the Phenomenal Woman in the Maya Angelou poem.
Alice had been through months of hell with the hideous chemo. And as if that wasn't hellish enough, her partner had lost his own battle with cancer, too, shortly after she was diagnosed.
She began her chemo the day after her partner's funeral.
How the heck did she manage to cope with that?
I have no idea, except that she was the strongest woman I have ever known.
Alice was a phenomenal woman because she was so incredibly strong, kind, caring, generous and loving - through and through.
There wasn't a bad bone in her body.
After working with her local CAMHS to help families facing eating disorders, she retired and volunteed as a First Responder with the Ambulance Service. For no pay. She just did it because that's the kind of person she was.
She found working with CAMHS challenging as it reminded her of the hell she went through when her daughter had anorexia (her daughter is now fully recovered). But, being the kind of person Alice was, she decided to soldier on until it became too triggering and too much of a strain on her own mental health. So she made the very reluctant decision to retire.
I was wondering what Alice would say about yesterday's article in the Daily Mail about my son's struggles and subsequent recovery from anorexia - what she would say if I'd WhatsAppd her about the nasty, cruel and thoughtless comments below the online version of the article.
And that makes me cry because I always cry when I think about Alice.
If I'd WhatsAppd her, we'd talk about good people versus bad people again. And thoughtless people who don't know any better. About trolls and about people whose own lives must be so sad that they feel driven to write nasty comments on an article about something as serious as deadly eating disorders.
I really miss not being able to talk with Alice when I feel down about something.
Initially - way back in 2011 or 2012 - it was me supporting her when she first emailed me as a result of finding this blog, the days when her daughter was descending into anorexia and she desperately needed to talk to another parent who 'got it' and understood what she was going through.
But as time went on, we supported each other, especially as we both went on to suffer the effects of trauma triggered by the experience of being mums of teens with anorexia.
Years later, I hope I went some way to supporting her through her illness.
But I never got the chance to tell her how much she'd meant to me - and how she was one of the most amazing, strong, good, caring, kind, generous and compassionate people I have ever met.
She died too soon and suddenly for me to do that.
I am so very fortunate to have known Alice - and the other lovely, beautiful people in my life who are the polar opposite of people like the trolls who said awful things about me in those comments on the article.
Alice would give me a hug and tell me not to listen to them; not to let them get to me.
To just ignore them.
And to think about the good people out there in the world.
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