I was unsure of how to spell unsure. The stress from that realisation made me miss the next word… and the next word.

It was another Friday spelling test and words were flying over my head. I didn’t know how to spell any of them. This would be another zero out of twenty words. Miss Jenkins, my teacher, would look down on me again. My parents would try to make me feel better by saying “We are not spellers. We do Math.” Not that I was doing much better in Maths.

I couldn’t even remember the words to try one answer. Just one! I looked to my desk buddy’s test, Belinda best student in the class. They all looked correct, I guess. Next minute, the test had ended, and I had failed.  I banged my head on my desk and sighed.

I could smell the sea. What? There was no sea nearby. I had recently watched a show on how brain tumours could make you smell things that aren’t there. Did I have a brain tumour? My eleven old brain couldn’t spell unsure but knew about brain tumours!

Then a crab ran over my foot. I had never seen one before. Although I had seen them in a picture book. Where did it come from? We don’t have a class pet. I looked around. Nothing on the bookshelves and the view from the windows above was a sunny playground. There was a sink behind me. The white plug sat next to the tap which wasn’t running. Water started to rush over the sink. What?

“Miss Jenkins” I exclaimed, “The sink is overflowing.” Belinda screamed as water started to rush over our feet. Miss Jenkins raced over. “It’s coming from the drain! I need to get a plumber.” Rushing over to the door she signalled to the class to follow her. The class ran for the exit. I was about to follow then I noticed the floor was covered in sand. Seaweed had started to grow from the floor too. The water was now up to my waist and I could see fishes swimming around. Brightly coloured tropical fish.

I started to wade my way to the classroom door when a giant geyser of ocean water shot out from the sink. There was no time to make my way to the door. The water was rising quickly. I began to swim to the top of the classroom. Once at the top, I took my last breath before sinking back into the watery depths of the classroom. The view was amazing, an ocean wonderland. Crabs walking along the desk. Fish swimming about just like it was a normal day. That’s when the white plug floated past. Of course! Plug the waterflow!

I started to swim to the plug when I saw a shadow quickly swim pass me. Was that a shark? Courage I thought, grab the plug stop the water! I dashed for the plug. It floated into a school of fish and bounced of their body. Coming back to my hand. Yes! Now to the sink. That’s when I saw the shadow again. Crap! Swim faster! FASTER! I made to the sink and plunged my hand into the water geyser.

Stretching my hand down into the sink though the rushing water, I plugged the drain. I danced under the water, taking a moment to celebrate.  Suddenly the water started decrease, as I slowly returned to the floor. Sand, seaweed and even the fishes disappeared as the water faded away. Everything seemed surprisingly dry, even myself. Except for one thing, everyone’s spelling tests were still wet. The ink blurred and illegible. The ocean in the class room may not have made sense but the spelling test was ruined! I was glad for that.

The shocks started before I left the specialist’s consulting room. I knew the diagnosis of cancer was coming from the time I’d found the lump eight days earlier. But it was everything that came with it that undid me. Shockingly for me I immediately had control over my own life taken away. The specialist started rattling off a list of all the other tests I now had to have before the surgery I needed and I interrupted to ask what… when… where did I have to go for these tests as I madly scrambled to get my pen and notebook out of my handbag. Only to be told that all the appointments had already been made for me and his secretary would give me the details on my way out. I opened my mouth to explain I had other things in my diary. Important things. Trivial things. MY things. But I shut my mouth without uttering a word. Clearly everything else was going to have to fit around THIS thing.

Then the shocking realisation that I had to tell the people who love me. There’s a story in all these conversations. A story and so much love and gratitude for each and every one of ‘my’ people. This story is about one of those people – my Dad. I have always known that he loved me, never doubted it. And I had to tell this wonderful man my terrible news.

He lived hundreds of kilometres away. I had to call him. I felt sick. I couldn’t breath properly but if I tried to take a big breath I felt like I would throw up. Somehow I managed to make that call. Somehow I managed to speak the words I knew he didn’t want to hear. And then there was silence. I knew he was crying and trying to hide that from me. I knew he was trying to get himself together for me. To talk to me. To speak words of comfort. And I knew the shock and the terror had started for him too. But in that silence I could feel his love and I could breath again.

Over the months and months and months that turned into years my Dad never forgot any day when I was due to have a test, get a test result, have chemo, radiation, start some other type of treatment, finish that treatment, start some other bloody thing. Every time I would get a text from him. Every. Single. Time. From a man who was renowned for being forgetful. Who went and got himself a mobile phone and learnt how to send texts after vowing he would never do such a thing. That he couldn’t imagine what could possibly be important enough to want to carry a phone around with you all the damn time.

So here I am. Still alive obviously. But he is gone. He had to call me with his own terrible news. Terribler news because his condition was terminal. The terriblest news. And when he told me, I was silent as he had been years before. I cried and tried not to cry at the same time. Tried to hide my crying from him. Wanting to talk to him and not being able to speak. Already feeling the horror of the grief to come. And, in his beautiful gentle voice, he said: “Better me than you love.”

Today is Natalie Klassans 48^th birthday.  It’s on my mind as I wake up and get ready to go to a writers workshop, quietly shitting my pants at stepping outside my comfort zone and putting myself out there, and it’s on my mind because I know I can’t call so she can tell me (again) how shit my voice is as I try to sing Happy Birthday to her.  I know I won’t be having drinks with her tonight, and our days of getting drunk and laughing at dating stories are of the past now- there is no way for me to reach her since she left this earth. It’s on my mind.

Nat would have been 48 today, maybe she still is turning 48 in heaven? I don’t know how it works up there – or if there is heaven at all. Actually scrap that turning 48 idea, she would have way preferred to stay young and hot, even though it was only three years ago, its still three years, she is forever mid 40’s now and not late 40’s.  I can hear her in my head telling me this.

It’s one of the reasons I am here today at a writers workshop, one of the reasons for a lot of things.

Three years ago she got given the prognosis of two to four weeks to live. Aggressive cancer, blah blah. You know the drill.  I remember getting the call, I was living in NZ at the time and she lived in Melbourne.  I was frantically trying to make plans to get to her immediately and in her usual way she was making jokes, “I have weeks yet…weeks, don’t rush!”. Then we would cry.  In the end I was so glad I rushed. When life throws you curve balls, you don’t always catch them. Some days you don’t even get to finish playing the game.

It took three days for me to get there in the end, the curse of living on the wilds of the west coast of the south island of NZ, I drove through snow and ice, took two plane rides and car ride then I was at the hospital, at the side of a women who looked radically different already.  I recall she never actually made it home, back to her bedroom, her cat, her life.

She went into the hospital to get results and never came out.  Seven days was all it took. Seven days and she was gone.  From when they told her to when she left. Seven days.

I could of course tell you so much about Nat cause she was one of my best friends, how she ate a piece of chocolate cake every day before she went the gym, how she played the clarinet and sang like an angel, how she told the filthiest jokes and had the dirtiest mind, how she was a fiercely independent woman and used to inspire me to want to be more like her…but I am not here to talk about that. What really gets me is the seven days.

How we used to talk about what we would do “one day”.  Everyone does I guess.  I floundered after she went.  I couldn’t fathom what I could take from this, I felt I had to find something or I felt like it would be in vain, losing her, such a vibrant person. Then it hit me. That we think we have forever, but our forever could be seven days.

I base a lot of things around that now. Nat doesn’t know it (or heck, maybe she does from wherever she is) but that thought helped me leave an unhealthy relationship.  Would I do this if I had seven days? Is that what I would accept? Is this who I would be? No.

So today is Natalie Klassans birthday.  She will not be given another seven days on this earth, but I might be.  So I left a relationship, I took a different job, I moved out from my partner, I am broke as hell but I am happy, all because I didn’t want to waste whatever my forever is, because I know forever doesn’t last as long as I thought. And of course I signed up for this class, because I miss writing and I want to do more of it, and If I have only seven days I have at least spent a part of that telling people not to waste theirs either.  You think you have forever. You don’t.

I began my working life in the city working as an auditor for T&G insurance because I was good at maths. I did not choose this work, I wanted to stay at school (to be honest I wanted to leave too) but dad said I had to go to work.

I was so young and hadn’t formed an opinion of myself yet, let alone formed any notion of what a suitable career might be for me. Just a girl!

Well that’s not exactly true, I had tried so many times…..

I had wanted to be a doctor since I could talk: No dad says, education is not for girls

I had expressed interest in becoming a nun; No he says, no bloody daughter of mine will be a penguin

My drawings of our new school uniform were chosen for display around the school and I thought I’d love to be a fashion designer. My brother, sign writer apprentice, told mum and dad I was not good enough at drawing, so that was the end of that.

I gave up trying, and at the age of 17 I finally gave in to just a girl and began work as an auditor, then in sales, until I married and had children. Motherhood suited me and I was good at it most of the time.

Time has flown, and along the way I’ve studied and done a lot of the things I set out to do with the skills I’d learnt. Now in my 60’s I still hear an instant no whenever I think I’ll (insert any new hobby, travel plan, study plan): It has taken a life time of undoing the early years conditioning and to battle against the inertia the ‘just a girl’ talk brings.

The future is huge, awesome in fact – I can do anything I choose to do. I travel, I write and share my adventures, and I get to share my wisdom with other women just like me. The early no’s I once heard taught me to be underwhelmed with life but I’ve turned them around to reveal of portal of grace I never knew existed.

My world is open and filled with adventures. Just a girl is now a woman who has lived, is living an amazing life. Two thirds of the way through, what’s next?

The first time I gambled for a man’s life, I lost and he was shot. And that was shit. And I feel sorry about it to this day. I don’t know what I was expecting or even thinking to be honest but it seemed like something that was important not to refuse.

Roll the dice, and save this guy who was tied up to the chair. Don’t roll the dice and walk away and he dies. Dies, dice — they even sound the same.  Full disclosure, I had some skin in this game because the tied-up guy and I had just married and it even though what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, I didn’t think walking out on him tied-up in Vegas was cool. But hey ho, that’s exactly what ended up happening. Gamble a 4, roll the dice, get a 2 and boom! One dead just-married guy. One hell of a wedding weekend.

Beneath the plane’s wings earlier, Vegas had presented its usual dusty, weird self. Like the drunk that she is, the city doesn’t come up well in daylight. Bitter and withered and reeking of loss, but we didn’t have time to care about that, we just got the hell to the hotel so we could hit the tables.

It wasn’t until I saw the note on the suite door that I figured something was up. “FUCK YOU” in bold type. (Calibri, nice. This smooth asshole had seriously woke font style I’ll give her that). “Her”? Yep. But more on that in a bit.

Husband-to-be pulled the note off the door, laughed (awkwardly the more I think about it) and shoved it in his pocket. The hallway was empty, silent. Not even a maid’s cart, or congealed room service plates in view. Having had more than a few drinks on the plane I didn’t give the FUCK YOU much more thought, instead I couldn’t believe how big the suite was. It’s always a dilemma when travelling — how much do you shell out for a room you hope not to spend too much time in. But we were in love, he was loaded and I figured a substantial amount of fucking would need to take place in there for him to feel like it was a good investment. Me? Well, it didn’t matter what I thought.

Next minute, or at least that’s how it seemed, husband-to-be was on the phone in the bathroom speaking low and slow. Why would he need to make a call? He had insisted this be a “turn the phone off” weekend to celebrate the moment we were to pledge our troths in front of Elvis and embark on the happiest life EVER together.

Why the fuck was he on the phone right now? I mean shouldn’t we have been christening that gigantic bed? I had new undies on. New bra. Not cheap and now maximum impact had been wasted. Ugh whatever. I went to take in the view. Usual Strip, slowly starting to twinkle as the day came to an end.

Time to frock up, and get out there. If he wasn’t going to take advantage of the new undies then I wasn’t about to wait until he got off the phone. Dress on, “see you downstairs” whispered through the bathroom door and I left. Next time I saw him he was gagged, crying and minutes away from getting his head blown off. Like I said, brutal weekend that could have been entirely avoided if I hadn’t bought the damn lingerie from that stupid fucking bitch back home.

To be continued….

What surprised me was the splash, for that is all I remember of what happened. My next memory, as misplaced as it may have been, was the glitter of water across her neck as she lay cold and childlike on the weathered boards of the dock. She was waiting ; waiting to have her diamonds returned to her neck or waiting to be resuscitated. I couldn’t tell which.

I found myself stumbling along the road which led from the dock back to my house. It was rough and irregular. I wouldn’t have been the first to trip on it, but to trip so continually without so much as a solitary pint in my belly, was testament to the shock I was in. All I could think of was the glint of water beads and then the bare sickly coloured skin  of her neck, and as those images rose to my consciousness so too did the cobblestones, again and again, to trip me all the way to my front door. With my head in my hands I crouched down to wait against it and as I did so, out of my pocket spilled that lady’s jewels, grotesque and innocent as they hit the sandstone threshold and glinted up at me.