March 2012
They say that life is a lottery. They say life is what you make it. They say you win some you lose some. I buy the odd lottery ticket in the hope that I will win something but so far Lady Luck has evaded me, or forgotten me or just doesn't want me to win. What makes one person's life better than another's? It's a question that I have pondered over as I have got older. Take a friend of mine, Pat, our birthdays were five days apart, we were at junior school together, we played together, we went to piano lessons together, we learnt to swim at the same time (although I cheated and kept one foot on the bottom). Everything we did, she was better and cleverer than me; even her handwriting won her praise and it's still beautiful today. Then came the bombshell: at fourteen she and her family were emigrating to America to a better life in California, thousands of miles away.
We kept in touch by the occasional letter then at sixteen she got married to a sailor who looked so handsome in his navy whites and she looked lovely in a ballerina style white dress, then her first son was born, then a second son ,then a few years later a daughter. In the meantime her parents were divorced, her mother remarried and her sister, June who was prettier and had always been the favourite, married an Armenian businessman who was a few years older than her.
I remember the photo Pat sent of her one storey house in the desert and in the letter she said she had wall to wall carpet, I couldn't think what she meant as most people I knew still had lino and mats in their houses. However I digress, Pat and her husband came to England for a visit as Pat had relatives in Dagenham and they came to spend a day with us. She was how I remembered her although she looked a bit frumpish in her dress and her husband Gary, tall blonde and handsome, looked like a film star. On leaving the navy he had become a trucker and was away from home sometimes for weeks at a time, and it transpired he also played away, you could say he had a girl in every diner! So it was inevitable they divorced, but the girlfriend Gary moved in to her house had a nasty streak and had sown grass seeds all over the driveway and front lawn so when it grew to over a foot high it looked unkempt and very untidy which put off prospective buyers and Pat came away with practically nothing.
Pat went to stay with her eldest son who had fathered four or five children, he was also on drugs and having no room for Pat in his house let her stay in the garage. I don't know how long she stayed with her son and I don't know how she got on with her other son or daughter as letters were by then very few and scarce. I do know she went to visit her sister who lived in a large house in a very secluded gated community and on arriving, Pat, after a two hour journey, was told her sister didn't want to see her. June was still close to her mother who also didn't want to speak to her, so she went to stay with her father who relied on her to do everything for him with little or no thanks. The worst part of Pat's story is the fact she had no-one to care for her when she had a cancer scare last year, and had radiation treatment. I sympathized with her as I too had to go through with four weeks of radiation. Her children and her grandchildren were scattered all over California, too far away for them to visit. Then another cruel blow came when she was informed that her mother had died and was already buried before her sister told her, as she was not welcome to be at the funeral.
What had Pat done to be treated in this manner? What lottery game had been played by her once united family? Not one that anyone would want to play but then as they say you have to be in it to win it. To lose more than you win is a blow to the self esteem but there is no hate in Pat's letters just a sort of acceptance that life is what you make it whatever cruel hand fate deals you.
Must go now to buy the winning lottery ticket!