My best friend all through my twenties and some of my thirties was called Lucy.

We lived in a shared house together in a somewhat colourful neighbourhood (once described by my parents as a “slum”) in Nottingham.

Many housemates passed through that house in the years we lived together, but Lu’s and mine was one of the firmest of the friendships forged during that time.

The friendship lasted, outliving the tenancy, relationships, new homes, new loves, the loss of a pregnancy and a parent, and on into adulthood and motherhood.

Lucy was an artist and one of the few truly beautiful people I have ever known. I don’t just mean physically beautiful, though she was certainly that. I mean she had a beauty of spirit and character that was rare like the purest gemstone, or the most delicate flower.

It was impossible for Lu to think badly of anyone. She always saw the positive, the good in people, and by doing so and charming people without even knowing it, she dragged that good out of them and made it real.

Children loved her. I loved her. She constantly showed me the antithesis of my own youthful cynicism and made me better than I was.

Lucy went to live with her first love in a teepee in a field in Devon. The mud sucked off my wellies in winter and we swam naked in the river in summer.

She made a home on Urchin, the tiniest canal boat I had ever seen, with two naughty black cats. We cooked nettle soup on her stove and listened to The Archers.

I saw in the new millennium with her, at a wild party in a tiny cottage in Somerset.

I went to her wedding in a little deconsecrated chapel. Everyone brought a single flower and as she arrived, five months pregnant and wearing white moon boots under her wedding dress, she collected each guest’s flower to make her bouquet.

We stayed in touch throughout ups and downs, trials and tribulations, love and pain.

And then, in her early thirties and with two young children, the eldest the exact age my first child would have been had it been born and the youngest just a few months younger than my lad, Lucy died.

One of those freak things, a rare and aggressive form of liver cancer unexplained in terms of cause and unresponsive to any treatment.

Lucy was born at summer solstice and she died at the beginning of June, when summer was blooming everywhere.

I always pause to think about and remember her at this time of year.

I still miss her terribly.

Life isn’t fair and it’s mysteries cannot always be explained.

People don’t always get what they deserve.

And I don’t believe in karma. ♥

Some of you may remember this post – I wrote it this time last year.

I am re-posting it because this weekend would have been Lucy’s birthday.

Friendship doesn’t die.

But death leaves it with nowhere to go…

Today I will be spending a little quiet time outdoors, surrounded by the natural things that Lucy loved.

I will remember her as I always do, and I will treasure the fleeting beauty of midsummer.

As Lu herself would have done. ♥