Beware the Ides of March

"Death," I said to my counsellor on Monday: "March has been a month of death."

It all started when I got home just after 6pm on the 4th March. It was Monday night, I had just worked for 8 hours then had counselling, then sat on a cramped and slow bus home.  I was very weary as I drove up, ready for a rest and maybe bible study later.  My neighbours were talking on the balcony upstairs, so as I got out of my car I said hello.

"Have you seen number 6?", asked Maura my neighbour.
I said "No, not for weeks."

I hadn't noticed her for weeks, but I'd been working and she usually left in the morning way after I leave home (these days I'm out of the door around 7-7.30am at the latest) taking her shopping cart with her, in a big overcoat, with a visor pulled down low over her face. In over 4 years since I moved in, I'd never spoken to her, and she always avoided me. Sometimes as I came out of my flat, her door would suddenly shut as she made sure she didn't come out the same time as me, or if I drove up as she was letting herself inside, she was obviously hurried to get inside before I got near her.

She was obviously quite anxious, possibly even paranoid. I wasn't even sure she spoke English. The main interaction I'd had with her was when I heard this scraping noise coming from outside. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.   Something weird was happening so I went outside to check. There she was, a tiny person, barely 5 feet tall, trying to drag a big bar fridge out to the kerb. So I helped her. It was before I got sick and my energy felt almost infinite, and I picked up the fridge in one big lift and took it out to the curb.

I don't know which spelling of curb/kerb is right so I've used both.

Anyway, I hadn't seen her for weeks, but that wasn't exactly uncommon. I never saw her. I never heard her pretty much and I had never spoken to her.

"There's a bad smell coming from her flat," said Maura.
"Oh... that's not good," I said.

I peered in the window. She always had all the windows covered by blinds but I could see blow flies. A LOT of blow flies.  It was all sealed up.  Round the side the high window also had a lot of flies.

I smelt the smell. That's the smell of rotting flesh. I know that smell. It's the smell that used to appear in my flat when Happy would hide meat and never eat it later. Thankfully the twins now eat the meat so I don't have rotting meat around.

But I knew that smell.

"We should call the police," I said.  "Let's just call the police. It can't hurt."

So I called the Police Help Line. After all, it wasn't an emergency. If she was dead, she wasn't going anywhere and there was no reason to think it was a suspicious death.

The police help line didn't answer. So then Maura called the Ashfield police. They did answer. They said they were coming.

Maura and I sat and waited and chatted. I had a Long Tall Sally delivery sitting outside my flat. Two gorgeous dresses, and two tops. I opened them as we chatted but I really wanted to go in and try them on.

The police came. There was a tall young man, maybe about 30. Probably a senior constable or something like that. He found the window would slide behind the security bars and slid it across and peered around moving the blind and curtain. His face turned a weird expression of dismay, disgust, revulsion and Oh My Godness. He didn't have to say much. His face told me. But he said, "Yes, she's dead."

I had no desire to look in. Not for me the forensics of an actual dead body, so rotted that it smelt and there were flies. Maura cried. Francesca my other neighbour cried. I comforted them. I didn't feel like crying.  I wasn't sure what I felt - a combination of sadness, disgust, dismay and guilt that a dead body had been right next to door to me... I wasn't crying. But all the same it was quite emotional.

Later on, they told us to go inside, you don't want to see this, and we went back to our individual flats. Most of us in this block live alone. They are all one bedroom flats. It's not like there's a lot of room for families. It's singles, mostly. And that is the second body that has been found dead here. The first one was right after I moved in, a guy in Maura's flat had died. I talked to the forensic cleaner. She said she liked her job.   They renovated the flat and Maura moved in.

I think it hit Maura harder than me, so later that night I offered to come up via the back way. I had no desire to be told to go inside by the police again, and I certainly didn't want to see anything.

4 neighbours gathered in Maura's flat. We were all chatty. Not wanting to be alone on this weird night with the carpark lit up by the multiple emergency vehicles. We talked for a while and then all went to bed.

I couldn't keep my eyes open but the police were still there when I went to bed. They had gone by morning.  The next day the real estate came and they stripped the place later that week. It's all open at the moment because there was water leaking and they're trying to dry it out. I spoke to the real estate agent who was there. The landlady will need to renovate before anyone else could possibly move in. I hope for another quiet neighbour, but maybe someone who will actually say hello.  And I found out her name. Her name was Joyce.

======================

A week later, on Monday 11th March, I got a message on Facebook from my friend Duncan's wife, Fiona. I didn't really know Fiona. But I'd known Duncan a long time and read every blog post he wrote. Duncan had died. This wasn't unexpected, but then I did cry. I cried for my friend Duncan, who for 3 long years had battled cancer that had spread to his lungs and his brain and had now taken his life. I cried for his family; for his lovely wife Fiona, for his beautiful two little children. I cried that I had lost my friend and that the cancer had finally taken him. I cried with relief that I had taken a day off work a few weeks before to see him. I cried with loss as I mourned the friend who'd been so helpful to me in my last 13 months of illness.

I was sad. I cried. But I had to keep working, there was so much to do. So I tried to put it out of my mind, and mostly succeeded.

But on the way home, on another slow and drudgy bus, I saw the messages on his wall from his friends. I added my message there. Before I had worked out how to visit him with my limited energy and very busy work, I had written him a letter, a eulogy of sorts, telling him how much I would miss him, what I loved about him, what he had helped me cope with. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to see him, and there's no point in a eulogy really if the person doesn't hear it, and I wanted him to know he had mattered to me and I would miss him and that I was so angry I couldn't swap places with him. Me, with only 3 ferrets depending on me. Him, with a wife and 2 beautiful children. But I added a short message on Facebook, and then I cried. I cried all the way home, barely hiding it from the oblivious heartless uni student next to me. I cried driving home from the bus stop. I cried at home. I cried into my ferret's fur. I cried into my pillow. I cried.

The rest of that week I'd tear up unexpectedly, mostly hiding it from everyone.  And I got the message that his funeral was on Tuesday, just down the road from work.  I was so happy it was going to be so easy to get to, that there would be no need to stress about how to get there, as it was just a few blocks from my office. I could go to work for a bit before I went to the funeral.

And then on Friday, March 15th, a gunman killed 50 people in New Zealand. 50 people who were going about their normal lives. 50 people who had been killed by a white racist.

So yeah, March. It feels like a month of death. I'll be glad when it's over.