A Curlew for A

Sad news today. My friend P texted me to say that our friend A had died last night back home in Slovakia after a battle with cancer. A shared P's flat for a while and I met her a few times both there and at ceilidhs just down the road in St Brides. She was a lovely person and when I started asking people if they might be interested in being subjects for my HND1 Major Project she said she would be happy to have her picture taken. The project, as I might have mentioned before on Blipfoto, was on the theme of Homecoming and portrayed a number of different people coming home from.. somewhere. Dressed appropriately and at the point of opening their front door. A and I agreed we'd shoot her as if she had just come back upstairs from being out in the back green and so we set up a shot with her carrying a wine bottle, a glass and a plate. We tried a few different variations but in the final shot she is carrying the plate and glass in front of her and the bottle down by her side. She has a brightly patterned scarf over her head and hanging down over one shoulder. And a lovely smile.
After she moved out of P's flat we kept in touch but only intermittently. I wasn't really up with her news. So this morning, the first in our rented flat, with the sunshine streaming through the window I was shocked to read P's message. I had heard A hadn't been well a while ago, but didn't know what had been wrong. I was only a rather distant acquaintance and probably she didn't want to share the details. Or maybe it just wasn't something to tell in an email or a message on social media and had we met up, as we planned to do more than once but never seemed to manage, she might have told me more in person. So I don't really know if the cancer went away and came back, or if there had been something else before and the cancer was more recent. I'm guessing from P's text that the cancer had been what she had been battling against for a while but I don't really know or even need to know. I do know that, despite the fact I hadn't seen A in a while, the world feels a little less bright knowing that she is no longer around.
Can you miss someone you haven't seen for a long time?
I think I do.

This is one of the flock of curlews I watched out of our kitchen window this morning while waiting for the kettle to boil. They seem to like the grassy expanse of the football fields out there.

I've been off Blipfoto for a while as we have been moving around between different flats since we sold the house and looked for a place to rent. We moved into the rental yesterday and so I have a load of backblips to catch up on. Trouble is the broadband won't get turned on for another week, so perhaps I'll manage a few more like this one, via a tethered connection, or it will have to wait a little longer.