I had another post in mind for today -- until the phone rang yesterday afternoon.
It was my mom. She told me she'd had to read the weekend newspaper page three times because she just couldn't believe her eyes.
There was an obituary.
For my dear friend R. of 41 years.
To say I was stunned was an understatement.
I'm still stunned.
Mom said it sounded like she was hit by a car, a couple of weeks ago now. After I hung up, I did some Googling. Besides the newspaper & funeral home obituaries, I found a slew of press pieces and a few social media posts from mid/late November. She had indeed died as the result of being hit by a car, at an intersection close to her condo building in Winnipeg. She was the second person to die at that intersection this year, and friends held a candlelight vigil for her there a couple of days later that received a lot of media coverage. I gather that she actually survived the run-in with the car with a fractured leg and was taken to hospital, but died there suddenly the following day.
She was 67 years old.
I am sure I have mentioned R. many times in this blog, although not by name or perhaps even initial. I met her in the fall of 1984, when I took over her job as a reporter at the weekly newspaper in the small town where my parents had recently moved. She was moving on to the radio station in another nearby small town, but still lived in our town, and we covered the same town and municipal council meetings, school board meetings and other local events -- often followed by a few drinks at a local bar with other local newspaper and radio reporters. (We called ourselves "the Junior Press Club.")
A year later, I got married and moved to Toronto, and a few years later, she did the same. We'd stayed in touch and met up a couple of times a year for lunch, whenever she was downtown, or for a shopping spree at the One of a Kind craft show, or a matinee at the theatre (we saw "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" with Donny Osmond and "Chess" together), or a lecture through the Unique Lives and Experiences lecture series (we had season tickets for a year).
Then her husband died, and a few years later she decided to move back to Winnipeg to be closer to her family and friends there. She would occasionally drive out to where my parents lived to see me and have lunch, including the last time I saw her, when I was "home" in July), and when she published her first (and only) book this spring -- a memoir about growing up in poverty in 1960s-1970s Manitoba, and how her mother held the family together. Dh took me to a bookstore about a half-hour's drive from here when she was there signing copies. (My mom also saw her this fall at an event & signing organized by the local library.) I will treasure my signed copy and I am so sad there won't be any more books. She told me (with a mischievous grin) that she thought her next book would be a novel about a smalltown newspaper ;) and we both had a good giggle over that.
Besides being a talented writer, she was a master of many crafts. She sewed, knitted and crocheted many of her own clothes and as gifts for others, made quilts, and was a certified quilt appraiser who only recently let her certification lapse. She loved to travel, and had a wide circle of friends.
R. was also childless. She was a stepmother to her husband's children (in particular the youngest son, who lived with them when he was a teenager), and a grandmother figure for their children. When Katie died, she told me about her younger brother, who died as an infant, and how she still had a couple of his toys. She also lost her older brother a few years ago, and is survived by her older sister.
2025 has not been a good year in many ways. Too many people I knew and/or loved -- many of them my own age or younger -- departed this life, including (but not limited to) fellow blogger Bamberlamb, my friend M. from our pregnancy loss group, my cousin (last month), not just one but two of my high school classmates (within about two weeks of each other this summer), as well as our English teacher, Mr. P..
And now R. :(
There's a Celebration of Life planned for this summer, right around the time I am usually "home" for a visit, followed by the interment of her ashes in the smalltown cemetery up north, where her parents are buried. If I'm there, I will certainly attend.
Hug the people you love. Make that phone call, send that email, arrange that lunch date. Life is short, and tomorrow is not promised.
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
