Rosita Boland: When the email went unanswered I felt a rising dread

When there was no reply to my email, I felt a rising dread. My friend Rose is 85. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had not seen her in three years. I had had some email contact with her over that time, but not in recent months. A fortnight or so before I was due to travel to the US over the St Patrick’s Double Bank Holiday Bonanza Weekend, I emailed Rose. It’s our ritual to go for a catch-up lunch when I’m back in Cambridge; a place I lived in for 10 months some years ago. That’s where I met Rose. She was a provocative and formidable writing tutor, whose class I took for one semester.

There were six in the class. Rose was then in her 70s, her hair a silver whorl, her gait a little unsteady. The other writing tutor had even more years in her bones than Rose. It did not occur to any of us who took their classes that this was unusual. We just felt grateful that we were availing of all that accumulated experience.

Rose threw some of the best faculty parties on campus, and I went to all of them. She adopted the Tom Sawyer approach. She provided the wonderful food and drinks. We pitched in with more drinks. When we arrived, she instructed us how to extend the table, which glasses and silverware and dishes to lay the table with, and where the extra chairs were kept. Later – many, many hours later – we loaded the dishwasher, carefully hand-washed and dried the glasses, put the table and chairs back, and stored the leftovers in the fridge.

We find our mentors sometimes without seeking them out. I wrote a few bits and pieces of fiction for the assignments Rose gave us, but neither she nor I were satisfied with the results. Towards the end of my time there, Rose sat me down and filleted my work with the authority of a sashimi master. There was not much left of it – or me – at the end. But she asked one crucial question that day.

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What, she asked, was my favourite book. And why.

I told her. It was a non-fiction book.

“Write your own version of that,” she instructed.

I thought about those words for a long time. Three years ago, I published Elsewhere, a book of essays about my travels. I am not sure it would have happened without Rose’s sage advice.

There were many stairs to Rose’s Cambridge apartment, and no elevator to evade them. The last time I was there, when we ate many oysters together, I was troubled to note that my friend was not quite as mobile as she had been. She was as feisty and smart and incisive as ever, but her body was in some discord. She didn’t mention it, so neither did I.

When Rose uncharacteristically did not reply to my email earlier this month, I fretted for some days. Then I got in contact with a wider circle of people, seeking information.

What is interesting you right now? What are you thinking about these days?

The news came back. Rose had had a fall last month. She was undergoing some rehabilitation, and physiotherapy in a residential centre. At the beginning of April, she was going to move from there to sheltered accommodation, but remain living in the same area. Due to her shoulder and hand injury from the fall, she couldn’t email or text, but was able to answer her phone; a number which I then called.

I arrived to see Rose in the facility where she was recovering with a box of 100 postcards of images of different varieties of roses, and a sense of anxiety. I did not know how I would find my friend.

She was sitting up, wearing a mask with shamrocks on it in my honour, which made me laugh before she had said even one word. Her recent fall had not been her first, but it will hopefully be her last. Over the course of my visit, I realised with relief that my friend was fine. She was more than fine. Her sharp mind was intact. Her spirit was resilient. She won’t be climbing stairs again, but she won’t need to in her new home, which is all on one level.

I gave her the box of rose cards, and told her she could send them to friends as notices of her change of address. Or, I suggested, as invitations to her moving-in party. It turns out, she was already well ahead in planning that party. There will definitely be parties in Rose’s new home.

Other visitors had brought books, and flowers, and plants. I set about refreshing the water in the vases, nipping off dying blooms, and cutting stems. We exchanged our news as I performed these floral tasks.

“What is interesting you right now?” Rose asked, out of nowhere. And then, “What are you thinking about these days?”

I looked up in surprise from watering a pot of yellow narcissi. When you haven’t seen people for some time, they ask how are you, and what’s been happening. But these particular questions were very different. These questions required contemplation, and analysis, and thoughtful answers.

After a while, I told her. Later that day, on the plane back to Ireland, I realised my friend of old had asked the most insightful of questions. They felt like a gift.