Fallen comrades

As one has said before the trouble with getting older is that you forget things. Memories become kaleidoscopes of colour and impressions that fade a little more with each passing day. Personally one doesn’t have a problem with this on some levels... actually most levels to be honest. He thinks it is good to remember things... a bit like exercise for the memory in some ways.

Oh don’t get one wrong, one does realise that most people remember their past, particularly significant events... it seems horribly overrated in some ways. Those boxes are there for a reason and yes the base level of mild anger that one operates from probably is unresolved grief, but one is not convinced that talk therapy works either. The trouble is that although a good time was had by all, some didn’t make it. Sue was one of those.

She was with Hobbit from an early age, a glorious redhead with an engaging manner and an impish sense of humour. Although he adored her they parted. She wanted marriage, children, a home and a white picket fence while he did not. In the end they went their separate ways though like most of his exes they stayed in touch... It was a bit like being a clan member in some ways, all held together by the shared experience of him.

We hung out together, vetted his new girls, sunbathed together and went out. One night a gentleman came up to us and asked to speak to Mrs. Hobbit. There was a peal of laughter and a voice quipped- which one? There are about seven of us in this room tonight. He wanted the original one; an interesting tale in her own right for another time...

Unfortunately living with Hobbit had given Sue a taste for a lifestyle she couldn’t afford. She decided to make the most of her assets and went on the game. The idea was to make her money and run. Of course she spent it faster than even she could make it... furniture, furs and a powder blue sports car that had an automatic roof that would never work when it rained.

When one met her it was ten years on... a long time on the game. She was still glorious, but the alcoholism was taking its toll. Her life was complicated by the fact that her mother had died of  Huntingtons disease. As there was a sister she had a 50/50 chance of having it. Sue wouldn’t get tested... she always knew it was her that had it. She drank to forget; unfortunately combined with her fondness of diet pills it made her volatile... fine and giggly to homicidal in half a glass.

We were home one night when she rocked up sporting a bottle and a black eye. The first she had grabbed on the way. The latter was from her then boyfriend. It turned out she had gone for him with a carving knife and it was the only way he could stop her. That relationship ended with her tipping all his belongings off the balcony of the flat, and her molotoving the lot.

She drifted off into her own world, lost to all of us. We would get the odd message. Like the time a taxi driver turned up with her beautiful silver fox coat. Apparently she couldn’t pay the fare and had told him to take it to Hobbits. She was kicked out of her flat and lived here and there. The last Hobbit heard was from her father; he had her in and out of rehab and care places, but finally she checked herself out.

Sue died alone in a park of complications from Huntington’s disease and exposure. She was 38.

And for years one was so pissed at Hobbit for his hand in all of this and at all of us for not taking better care of her, but the young are judgmental and the old know you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.