The Loss Of My Best Friend
Thirty years of friendship
In 1991 I hitched a ride from Kununurra to Darwin with a couple of truck drivers. This was not a planned journey, as I was running from my abusive husband. What I was going to do when I hit Darwin? I had no idea.
The truck drivers had a spare room at the hotel they were staying at, and allowed me to use it for the three days they were staying there, then I was on my own and thought I’d be spending nights on a park bench, until I could sort something out.
But then on Christmas Day, two days after I had arrived in Darwin, I met a man called Bruce. He was the cleaner at the hotel and it turns out, 18 years my senior. The truck drivers had told him I was homeless and he kindly offered me a place on his lounge room sofa, until things sorted themselves out. I was extremely grateful for his kind offer.
From that day forward, Bruce became someone extremely important in my life. He was like a father to me and was always there to give me a helping hand. He was my soul mate, my best friend, someone I can never remember ever crossing words with.
With Bruce’s help I did get back on my feet. Over the following years I became the proud mother of two gorgeous boys and Bruce stepped up and acted as their grandfather without ever being asked. He loved my boys as if they were his own grandchildren.
When I needed a baby sitter, Bruce stepped up to the plate. My boys just adored him.
In 1995, my boys and I moved to Batchelor, a town 96 kilometres south of Darwin. I purchased land and built a house and Bruce would drive down on weekends to help out where needed. As a single mother, his help was always appreciated.
Then in January 2000, I packed my boys and as much supplies as possibly could fit, in my little Hyundai Excel, and left Batchelor to move to Queensland.
We missed Bruce terribly and he missed all of us too but he would often drive over and stay with us for awhile. The last time we were lucky enough to have his company for three months, as the centre of Australia flooded and he was not able to drive home. None of us were complaining though.
I had been living in Mission Beach, Queensland for almost 12 months when things started to go wrong in Bruce’s world. He was made redundant from his employment and due to his age he was having a hard time finding work.
As Bruce was a Vietnam Vet, he decided to apply for a pension through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately this did not go smoothly and it took two years for approval to be granted and receive his first payment.
During this time he was struggling financially and suddenly found himself homeless, as he could no longer afford his rent.
I was honoured to be able to return a favour. Bruce had saved me from the streets ten years before, by opening up his home and his heart to me and I now did the same for him. I still had my house in Batchelor and it was perfect for Bruce as he never wanted to leave the Northern Territory.
Over the next 20 years, Bruce occupied my house in Batchelor. He loved living there. To be honest, Bruce was the only reason I had not sold the property. Bruce used to comment that he would love to buy it from me if he ever won lotto.
During all these years Bruce was always at the end of the telephone if I ever needed help or a shoulder and the reverse also applied. We had lost count the amount of times we have been there for each other.
In 2020, Bruce started complaining about a very painful back. This injury had, in fact, put him in hospital twice in recent months. However, the hospital kept sending him home with strong pain killers, instead of doing the right thing and finding the cause of the pain.
Bruce’s son Nathan, who lived in Adelaide, was extremely upset that the medical profession was not looking after his father, as was I. Nathan decided to fly up to Darwin on the 5 August 2020 to take his Dad, to whatever medical professional necessary, to help him with his pain and to find, and fix, the cause. I was so happy to hear Nathan was going up there to help.
I rang Bruce on Monday 3 August to check how he was going. I had to ring four times before he answered and as you can imagine, I was starting to panic. Bruce apologised and explained he had been laying down. Now I knew how bad it was because Bruce never laid down during the day. Never!
We talked for a few minutes and he said he would get Nathan to ring me Wednesday afternoon/evening so that we could sort out what Bruce owed me in rent. I told him not to stress over that as we could work it all out later.
Bruce then told me he had to go as he needed to go back and lay down. I knew for certain now that he was in unbearable pain.
He said two things to me just before he hung up. Firstly, he sadly explained that they wanted him to leave my house as they said he couldn’t look after himself. “Darling, I don’t ever want to leave here as I love this house,” he stated. He then went on to say, “Darling I love you.” I told him I loved him too and he hung up.
Now we have spanned 30 years of friendship and never, and I mean never, have we ever said the words “I love you,” to each other. We never needed to say them as we both knew. Now I have to wonder, did Bruce know?
Wednesday, 5 August 2020 at 5pm, my phone rang and I saw it was Nathan. I was expecting his call as Bruce had told me Monday afternoon he would get Nathan to call. I answered the phone joyfully saying, “Hi Nathan, how are you.” I was met with silence and then I heard Nathan sobbing. I knew and all I could say was, “no, no, no, no, no!”
Bruce was gone. He’d left this earthly plane and he had died at home, in my house, as he would have wanted too. Did he give up because they were trying to make him leave his home? I will alway have my doubts.
Did Bruce know on Monday afternoon, that would be our last conversation? Is that why he told me he loved me for the very first time?
I was devastated and to this day I am struggling to cope with the loss of such a monumental hero missing from my life. In fact the grief was so intense that three weeks after I heard the news I ended up in hospital with chest pains. They believed that I was suffering from takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome.
At first they believed I was having a heart attack but when they completed a scan they noticed an enlarged area of my heart and asked me if I had been under intense stress lately. I explained my loss and that’s when they diagnosed it as takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
It was a couple of days after I was discharged from hospital that it was both Bruce’s Birthday and Father’s Day on the same day. I had always honoured Bruce on Father’s Day as he was a surrogate father to me all these years.
My boys were heartbroken too, so on the Sunday of his birthday, 6 September, I organised a dinner party and set a place at the head of the table for Bruce.
Bruce was a fantastic cook and our favourites had always been, Rogan Josh and Osso Bucco, always made from scratch. No jar sauce was good enough for Bruce.
So on the day of the dinner party I spent most of the day making these two dishes, from scratch, to honour my soul mate and best friend, Bruce.
We made our peace with his loss that night and it was at this dinner party, through many memory recitations and tears, that we said our goodbyes to a true blue Aussie hero!
Goodbye Bruce xxx
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Originally posted on Medium
About the Creator
Colleen Millsteed
My first love is poetry — it’s like a desperate need to write, to free up space in my mind, to escape the constant noise in my head. Most of the time the poems write themselves — I’m just the conduit holding the metaphorical pen.
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