Dead friend.

Today was Alison's picnic. She was in my sister's primary school class, part of the blob, and she died on the 31st of August 1995 in a boating accident on Lake Wairarapa. She's been dead ten and a half years. The day she died I was at a philosophy conference at Canterbury and had my first conversation like a ping-pong rally with Sean. Irrationally, I feel a bit like she gave him to me.

Alison and I weren't close as friends go, but we laughed at some of the same things and liked to look at the things each other made. A few months before she died we went to The Commitments together, had a good time, and said we'd do it again sometime. We didn't.

Thinking of Alison makes me want to spend time conversing with my sister, and being kind to my children, parents, and friends; because that's the thing about life, it can stop without necessarily warning anyone and so I might not get the chance to fix my sins of omission tomorrow.

We could die tonight.