Dear Mandy,

when we first met you didn’t register much: just the younger sister of a girlfriend, a girlfriend who became one of my better friends.

the age difference back then meant more than it does now.

She is gone now & i miss her, not that i’d see her much, maybe once or twice a year if/when i was passing through. we’d talk like we’d last met yesterday & if she thought i was being a fool she’d put me right.

in all of this i saw you only a few times, visiting you with your sister or in passing, though i do remember times of your kindness.

then she died.

that was a loss to you, your family & to me.

i came to her funeral, meeting her friends (&mine) from way back when life had been harder for them, me & you.

i took no phone numbers/contacts from them feeling we would not be meeting again

you too were unwell by then, though i didn’t know this until the funeral.

her daughter was there & she had no clue as to who i was, even though i’d known her since she was a year old & had followed every inch of her career via her mum.

all i could say was her mum & i were lovers once & became friends.

like that explained everything.

you & i have texted since then, i’ve tried to follow the progress of your illness & of your life

yet i feel we never really connect.

could it be: i still somehow see you as the younger sister & that we never connected past that?

or is it;

our lives back then & still now are so very different that we really have nothing in common but your sister?

i send you jokes that you don’t seem to get or they upset your politics.

so i’ve drawn away, not through badness or any real issue between us, more a sadness that the commonality we had was your sister & that i’ve been holding on to you to avoid accepting Pamela has gone.

i miss her as no doubt you do too.

& now i must let you go not through any fault of yours, but that you remind me of someone i loved who has gone.

with care

Neil