My childlike mood intensified as I pulled into the car park. The sign proclaiming “Home of the Bracknell Bees”started sherbert fizzes in my solar plexus.
Bye bye boring gym. I practically skipped into reception. “Hi, I’m here for the adult beginners ice skating lesson.” I chirped “Do I need a token for the lockers?”
The receptionist looked as buoyant as a burst balloon. “Haven’t you been told? It’s cancelled this week. We called everyone last night.”
They didn’t call me. Charming. An hour and a half round trip for absolutely nothing.
“Well,” I said huffily, “they could have told me when I booked as I only called up yesterday.”
The receptionist deflected my haughty accusation with a weary, sad and extremely unexpected answer. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know until the evening. Our skating instructor died suddenly”.
I was so relieved I hadn’t launched into an affronted protest about my wasted journey. I apologised and asked if it had been a car accident. No, it hadn’t. She was fit and healthy, in the prime of her life and 25 weeks pregnant with her first child. She had been taking a lesson that day and had a headache, so had gone home to rest.
She never woke up. She died from a brain haemorrhage caused by a tumour. The doctors kept her heart beating long enough to give her baby’s lungs a chance to develop. I later found out that little Aya Jayne Soliman was born a few days later by C-section.
I sat in my car and cried. We all take it for granted that we will reach a ripe old age and have plenty of opportunities to do all the things we want to do.
Ella, J, anyone I love could stop existing at any moment. As could I. That’s not a cloud you can live your life under, but Memento Mori situations such as these urge me on to live a life that I love NOW.
It’s so easy to miss the present and to instead be living into some nebulous future when finally I’ll be living my Perfect Life because I have more money/less wobbly bits/another child/written that novel….etc etc
Despite the sad start, I am really enjoying my skating lessons. I had my second one on Friday and can now stop (eventually) without crashing into the barrier and I can turn in a full, graceful, albeit wobbly, circle.
It’s so much more fun than the gym. I’m also far more likely to go ice skating at least once a week.
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