A birthday tribute to my very dear friend. It’s been fourteen years since she died, but I still miss her…
Elspeth would have been sixty-years-old on the fourteenth of June this year. I thought about her all day on that Tuesday just over three weeks ago. I shed a tear and I raised a glass to her memory.
I first saw Elspeth when she arrived as the new girl in my class at South Morningside Primary School in Edinburgh in 1965. She stood at the front of the class and the teacher explained that she had come all the way from England and was going to be in our class. The teacher asked me to look after her. We were in primary 5 and nearly nine years old. It was the start of a 37-year friendship. As nine-year-olds I literally looked up to her – she was tall and skinny and I was small and plump – this size difference persisted over the next 37 years! At the time we met Elspeth seemed very exotic to me – with her strange English accent, a mum who drove her own car, and her family lived in one of the brand new houses in the area.
For the rest of our primary school careers we were inseparable. We played piano together, went to ballet lessons, ice-skating, had tea and sleepovers at each other’s houses. I went to all her birthday parties at Gullane beach, getting there in her Uncle Kenneth’s van. We were very loyal to one another and fought each other’s battles – woe betide anyone caught speaking ill of one of us in the presence of the other!
We developed a rather quirky, mutual sense of humour and shared our own special vocabulary and linguistic shorthand, which persisted into our adulthood. Our mothers told us the “facts of life” when we were 11 and we immediately compared notes and assessed our respective mothers’ performance of this duty – with a mixture of incredulity, amusement and horror.
We went on to different secondary schools. My family had moved to the other side of the city. We therefore made regular trips on two buses across town to see each other. Throughout our teenage years we shared our most intimate secrets – especially our experiences with boys! Then Elspeth family left Edinburgh to settle in Gullane, about fifteen miles along the coast, when we were both 17. This meant that we spent weekends living at one or the other’s house in order to keep in constant touch.
University meant even more distance apart –Elspeth at Edinburgh and me at St Andrews – but so what – we just travelled that bit further to keep in touch. Boyfriends became more serious. Elspeth met her Ian. Her Ian had a 21st Birthday party and Ian’s best mate, Graham invited his brother along. Elspeth invited me. I met Graham’s brother at the party. I had met my Iain. In 1978, I married my Iain and Elspeth married hers.
We spent the 1980s having babies and then Elspeth moved – not just out of town but to New Zealand and then Australia.
But we kept in touch – we knew that for best friends distance doesn’t matter.
In 1998 we were both diagnosed, within weeks of each other, with cancer. Elspeth with a recurrence of the breast cancer she first had in the 1980s. For me it was ovarian cancer and I was scared stiff. I called my friend in Australia and she calmed me down. She made me believe cancer could be beaten. She was incredibly brave and strong.
In 1999 I travelled to Tasmania to see her. We were by this time both in the clear. We laughed, reminisced, shared all our intimate secrets once more – giggled like the daft wee lassies we always reverted to being in each other’s company.
Then in 2001, I travelled to Tasmania again – this time my Iain came too. By now Elspeth was ill again – with aggressive secondary cancer – but again she was fighting – refusing conventional medical treatment but fortified by her great Christian faith and a timely visit from her sister Frances. We had a wonderful time together – sometimes we even included the menfolk! We talked about everything – life, death and everything in between. Her strong belief in the power of prayer and her amazing spirit sustained her for almost another year.
I had no such strong religious faith and although I hoped she would not be taken from us just yet, I guessed our farewell at the airport would be our last. And I think she did too. We held each other just that little bit tighter as we said goodbye, both of us in tears.
She died in May 2002, one month before her 46th birthday, leaving Ian without a wife and their three young sons without their mother.
Elspeth was also a much-loved daughter, sister, and friend.
She was one of the kindest, funniest, most generous, most loyal people you could meet.
She will always be my dear friend and I still miss her terribly fourteen years on.
I will raise another glass to her memory on my own 60th birthday in August.
