On our recent trip back to Victoria (August) we visited numerous family and friends, particularly in the Emerald /Cockatoo / Gembrook area where we lived for forty years until March 2021. There were many more people I'd have liked to visit but it was impossible, given our hectic schedule, to see all.
My friend Vilma lives close to where we did in Gembrook and I called there without notice after we visited our old house. Lib wasn't with me at this stage, she went back with Rob to Emerald where we were staying after we checked out Agnes St. We were moved to see our our old garden, most trees still thriving but generally the surrounds were unkempt compared to how it was when we left. Vilma is 90 years old and a dear friend who always was warm and welcoming to me over a couple of decades. I picked in her garden and helped her with various gardening work extending to cleaning her spouting when her partner Josef was not well enough to climb up ladders. Josef is also a friend of mine, he was a neighbour of Vilma's and after his wife died he and Vilma hit it off and Joseph moved in and rented his house out. Josef is several years, maybe 10-15 younger than Vilma but who cares about that if it works.
When I called Josef was not home. He was at medical appointment and is waiting for a new hip operation. I was sorry to have missed him but Vilma was so obviously happily surprised to see me that any flatness I felt seeing our old abode disappeared. Despite her 90 years Vilma is as sharp as a tack with the same positive outlook that always lifted me no matter the weather or what foul circumstances may have been my lot at the time. Some people have that effect on you. During our discussion I told Vilma that I had befriended her daughter Julienne on Facebook after she popped up on my feed one day and I recognized the surname as the same as Vilma's. Julienne lived in Perth. On her FB I saw after a year or so she moved to Wangaratta, so I had a couple of messages with her over that, as I had lived and worked there for 5 years 1976-1981.
Then Julienne stopped posting. Months went by and I wondered why she wasn't posting. I PM'd her saying I hoped she was alright. No response. I did again a couple of months later with again no response. I told Vilma while we were catching up on things that I was friends with her daughter on FB but she'd stopped posting. Vilma's reply gave me a start.
"Oh. July died." Totally surprised, I asked what did she die from.
"She just died, in her house." I asked again what killed her.
"They don't know. She just died. It was her time to die. Her heart stopped. They found her on the floor."
Vilma seemed quite composed about it although obviously sad. She said a policeman came to her door and sat in that chair there (pointing to it, next to hers) and told her. She said she asked the policeman could she ring one of her other daughters and tell her. He sat listening while Vilma told her July was dead and the daughter said, "I knew she was dead. I dreamed she was lying dead on the floor with blood coming from her head." The phone was on speaker so the policeman heard the conversation. Before leaving he wanted the other daughter's details, Vilma guessed because he found it a little strange. Nothing further came of it and it would seem likely it's possible people can dream things like that. That daughter did not live close to Julienne and there was no other way she could have known.
At least my mystery on why Julienne had gone quiet was answered. Another incident relating to Facebook comes to mind from earlier this year. A notification from a friend appeared in my feed.
"If you read this I'm dead."
There was more by way of explanation but I can't recall it without hunting back. Ann Bolch had suffered from breast cancer and undergone chemo etc but she succumbed. She wrote her own last post on paper and asked her husband Tim to post it after she left us. That one shocked me, I had seen mention of her cancer earlier but only in a positive way approaching treatment.
When I look at my FB friends there are quite a number who are no longer with us, but I don't remove them as somehow them being there keeps them in my life and reminds me that it comes to us all sooner or later. No exceptions.