by Christine Bennett

Created on: May 31, 2011

The phone rang, I lifted the receiver not knowing who would be ringing me at 2 a.m. in the morning.

It was hard to hear her voice there was such sadness in it, she spoke so softly as she told me why she was ringing at such an early hour, she was even apologetic.

She told me she was in a phone box, miles from anywhere, she was going back home to her husband, she had come to a decision and decided that today would be the day, she had rung to say she was leaving soon.

I didn’t want her to say goodbye, but she told me why she had come to this decision and for the life of me I couldn’t find a reason to ask her to stay.

She had never had an easy life, abused as a child, raped as a teenager, giving birth to a stillborn child and after meeting and marrying the one decent man in her life he had been taken from her after only a year, with cancer.

Evicted from her home, made redundant, no friends and no hope, she had an empty bottle in her pocket, she told me this so that I would understand, so that when she went quiet I would know.

It was an hour later that I noticed her sentences start to slur a bit, the words came slower, she sounded so tired, she told me she was going to sit down for a while, that she was cold, but feeling better now.

I pictured her sat in the corner of the phone box, almost asleep, another hour passed and I waited for the sound of her breathing down the phone, for a word, an acknowledgement that she was still there.

I prayed that she would tell me where she was, that she had changed her mind, but I knew she wouldn’t, she had made her choice, she was quiet now, I knew it was too late, her final hours were spent like the pills in the bottle.

She was a stranger I never knew , but I am honoured that she rang me, and as she drifted from this world to the next, I became a friend, someone who would listen to her story in her Final Hours.

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