WisteriaDrapedWishingwells

There's nothing like a morbid reminder of your mortality crashing into your reality when you least expect it to really tip your world upside down. So we're not going to live forever. so what? I like the ability I have to pretend that that is not a fact of life. And I am not the only one who likes to live each day pretending that death is not a fact of life. I am not alone, not at all. Bad things always happe to other people, they never happen to us, another pretend fact we cling to for dear life, until we can cling no more.
That's what that damn text did, it shattered the illusion of four friends who had all become experts in pretending away the obvious and embracing the 'just in case'.
Four friends, as different as each other as they were similar to each other. Rebeline, the exterminator of men and the very same person who liked to experiment with them. As one walks out the door another is walking in and they all but wave to each other as they pass each other by. Rebeline, exterior as tough as old leather and yet who quivers within at the slightest pinch of a headache, thinking it to be the onset of a stroke, except that it never does, yet even the track record of its failure to arrive does not deter her from always thinking the worst.
Deloria, young mother, mother earth type for whom nothing ever comes as a shock. As loving and as kind as any one person can be and yet as dizzy as the dizziest blonde, and yet, if she were not, what else could possibly make her quite as endearing?
Samara, always trying to excape her very dark past. Although she has risen above it, at the same time she seems to still be drowning in it. Running away from herself, yet forgetting that self cannot be evaded. Living alone, except for the odd one more try, devoted to writing, having worked on the same novel series for two years and written eleven parts. Like Rebeline, the tiniest twinge on her head can be the announcement of an impending gruesome end. In all other aspects of her life she makes molehills out of mountains and pretends the rest away.
Khalia, born overseas and a bit of a loner. Rebeline. Deloria and Samara her three friends the only ones she has garnered since jumping the ditch. The only one of the four that knows for absolute certain that nothing lives forever, she learned that the morning her baby would not wake.
Massive heart attack, the text said. Samara's children jumped with glee when they heard that she might be going. Excited chatter could be heard all through the house, as though it had been announced that a major prize in Lotto had been won. With mum gone, everything would change. No one to boss them around, no mother to scream and yell about the dogs not being fed, the cats being overfed and the rabbits being ignored. Such bliss.
Deloria's house still trying to come to terms with what has happened, no one person really knowing what the other person is doing.
Khalia's house filled with the former shrieks of, "I hope she bloody dies!" echoing painfully from the walls.
Rebeline's house was empty, mum abandoned altogether.

Piczo