Liz, my dear friend

Following on from the previous post, this is Liz, my second loss of last year.   I met Liz in 1990 when I attended Saturday classes at the Norwich School of Art.  Liz was an accomplished artist, garden designer and interior designer and had taken a part-time job as the administrator in charge of extra-curricular classes at the art school for some regular income.

 Liz was from a Catholic family in the city and went to the same convent as me but as were 10 years apart in years our paths did not cross at that time.  However, I did know her younger sister.   Our paths were to cross again and the next time we met aside from my Saturday drawing classes was with Antonia who I wrote about yesterday.  

Several years down the line,  Antonia was taking a group to Morocco and I joined her and here I met Liz again.  Liz and Antonia had known each other for many years although I did not know this at the time. 

This was to be the start of many trips for me to Morocco as Liz decided to take me along on her various trips:  drumming, dancing and Saraha adventures and this is where I met her Moroccan friend Alal who I was later to travel with alone.   

On my first trip to Morocco with Liz we went to search for land for Liz and then we went to the Fez Sacred Music Festival.  I was the guest of Liz because she invited me to join her as she did not want to be entirely alone for the second and third weeks of a month long stay.   Alal was driving her around looking at land although I was not with them the whole time.   This part of the trip was fraught as far as Liz and Alal went and the search for land which Liz wanted to buy so that she could  build a house did not go well and there were many arguments between them.    It did not end well. 

 

 

Back to the present, late last year I spotted an obituary in the local paper saying that Liz had passed away.  I had no warning and was not aware that she was ill.  The other day I looked at her 2024 letter to me received December 2024, which was her usual bright self including a poem and thoughts for the year.  

Her sister wrote an obituary for the Guardian which was published in Other Lives and the local paper contained a one page spread on her life.  Neither of these obituaries described the Liz that I knew and I wanted to scream out as I was reading them. It was clear that those of her family who lived miles away from her and who she rarely mentioned did not know the life of her that I knew.  I wondered if they ever knew of her trips to Morocco.  I concluded that possibly it was best if they didn't.  The search for land was costly and the venture never came to fruition. 

Liz was an animal lover and always had a dog as part of her life.  When we visited Morocco the first time together she smuggled a suitcase full of veterinary medicines to take to a local vet who she had  made arrangements to spend two days with helping in the clinic.  She did not tell me beforehand because the carrying of the veterinary products into Morocco was not without risk and she thought it better I didn't know as we passed through the airport.   I spent one day at the animal hospital with her but let her go for the second on her own. There were many dogs wandering around and I did not feel comfortable.  She happily went without me and I happily stayed at the riad. 

Liz did not marry but always had men around her and for her last years she had a partner, although she continued to live alone, who she met via the Guardian lonely hearts and they travelled together and were frequently together in the social scene locally.    He oddly did not get a mention in the obituaries.  Liz was an early entrant to on-line dating before it became as it is today and she had a very bad experience with a man who lured her to France under false pretences and she had to flee in the night with no car or way of getting home.  She secretly arranged for a taxi  to pick her up and so as not to be heard arriving at the house on the gravel she left on foot and fled up the road in the dark.   She wrote up her experience as an article which was published in the Guardian.  In spite of this experience she still tried out the lonely hearts columns and she did strike lucky.  I think the experience she had had in France would have put me off.  

I found out a few weeks ago that Liz's death had been very quick, a very aggressive cancer took her in a matter of weeks. 

Another friend gone and another who had been significant to me during a period of 10 years in particular.  Another reminder that I am getting old.