At 4 am this morning, when I usually check the time, I noticed a text from England. It was from the son of a friend. His father had died. I was left in the sad hour before dawn with this thought - that someone who loomed large in our lives and was a very important part of them for a while, had ceased to be.

Mike (not his real name) and his wife lived in a beautiful village in Dorset where Jamie and I had found ourselves at the start of our relationship together. It was chocolate box beautiful - thatched cottages down a hill with walking paths all around up to a ridgeway and the heath, a tiny shop in town, a church not far away (because, as I'd learn, a church was a centrepoint of most small rural towns in the UK) and a larger town about a ten minute drive away. It was idyllic. On the first day we moved house we discovered a chalk stream and a big old oak when we were walking the dog, and spied an otter. Henceforth, it was called the Otter Tree by all around, as this news made it into the parish news paper.

My son started school in the local primary. Mike and Hilda came over to introduce themselves and we met their two young children about the same age - the kids were 6 and 7 and Jarrah was 7. Before long came the after school plea to go to their house, which was far more exciting than ours. They had a trampoline and an attic. The kids would run wild building cubby houses out of couches and play dress ups. They had so much fun together.

On Friday nights, after work, Jamie and I would pop over for a wine, Mike's home made beer, and a cheese platter so big we'd roll ourselves out afterwards. They were generous, warm folk - Mike was a good twenty years old than us and Hilda was ten years older, but it didn't matter. They became good friends and like parents as well when ours weren't around. We loved them to bits.

Mike was a physicist and an adventurer, a treasurer for the church and active in the community. He had big hands that would invent things, such as the wood heated copper pipe that fed into the above ground swimming pool to heat it. I can remember his larger than life voice booming. He was a proper English gentleman with a love of education and science. He wouldn't let us sit there without a drink in our hand - elderberry wine, sloe gin, home made ales. Honestly, we had some big hangovers on Saturdays.

When we got married, they were there. I focussed on the kids as I walked up the aisle because I was so darn nervous. The church was 700 years old. Mike wore a kilt.

He'd fly flags on special occasions. He had such a collection of them.

When we left, we saw them two years later, staying the night when we'd visited from Australia. They'd always send us an hilarious letter at Christmas, detailing the crazy things that had happened in the family. The kids grew up. We spoke less and less. Distance is a terrible thing for friendship.

On our last trip, during COVID, we didn't stay for long - they were busy. Mike was given an old e type Jag for his birthday and we were there to see his face when he came down the driveway. He was overcome. He had grandchildren by then. I'd have one of my own within two years. I can't remember if I had told him that.

I adored our time in that village, and those guys were a huge part of it. It was a golden time really, starting out this life adventure with the man that was my soul mate. We had a lot of baggage to work through and it was the right place to land because of that fact - a place of cob horses and thatched roofs frosted in the winter, cider cooling in the stream in the summer and splashing in the freezing water, children squealing as they jumped off the roof onto the trampoline, long conversations and laughter, flags raised for St George and for Australia Day, and a pirate flag just for us. The last time I visited I burst into tears to see the place, as it held such beautiful memories.

Mike died in his sleep last Friday. A stroke, the paramedics thought. How odd it is to say goodbye at such a distance to a man who filled such a big space in our lives, and in the communities.

With Love,

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