Last night, the phone rang at something past midnight. I ran for it, in the way you do when you know something isn’t right. I might even have said something to that effect as I went. It was my middle sister’s fiancee – he’s a police officer as is she. He said he had bad news, then that there had been an accident and that my baby sister had been found in the bath and taken to the hospital and they’d done everything they could but it wasn’t enough and she’d died.
I said things like No, and oh no, and I can’t get there, we’ve all been drinking (my friend Alison had come over from York for the evening and we’d had a curry and a bottle of wine) and he said I’ll come and get you.
And he did, so I spent a couple of hours at the hospital with the rest of my sisters, and Katrin’s husband, who just kept asking what he was supposed to tell her children. I don’t know. I don’t know what you tell an 11 year old and a 5 year old – apparently the 11 year old knew something had happened as he’d seen Anthony getting her out of the bath, and they both know that she has epilepsy so they’ve seen fits and so on, but I guess he’d be hoping (as you would) that it would all be alright.
And my parents are in Turkey on holiday, and can’t get back until 20 past midnight tonight (they are actually due back tomorrow, but Thomas Cook were woken up and are doing everything in their power to move it forward). I spoke to them on the phone and they seemed to be feeling guilty that they weren’t there to look after us. And we agreed that it’s not supposed to be this way.
And I irrationally wanted to twitter last night, to have you all around me virtually if I couldn’t have you in person, but it was 1 o’clock in the morning and most sane ppl were probably asleep, or at the very least not sitting with their mobile phones or by their puters. And I couldn’t think what you could put in 140 characters to cover this situation either.
Today we will be going to next sister down’s house – her husband picked up the kids last night and took them there – they were asleep when Anthony left the hospital. We got back (Ali went with me – she’s known Katrin since she was 4) some time around 3 and I’ve had a couple of hours sleep – Tim’s still sleeping. I’ve told my children this morning – they cried for a minute, and I expect they’ll cry more later when they see other ppl crying, there are going to be a lot of tears shed today. And my body is reacting by rejecting everything, so in the middle of it all I have to keep running to the toilet.
It really isn’t supposed to be like this.
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