For Merry

Sunday and the thirty-fifth Covid blog.

I found myself this week feeling a little despondent and I think it’s how we are all feeling right now. My messages through text or zoom and phone call conversations all confirm the same thing.

This week has been half term and I haven’t been able to see my family or visit friends or just be me. I had good intentions but found a general feeling of apathy to be my nemesis.

Despite this I did go for several walks and I felt as if signs were indicating a path for me to follow. I truly believe we are sent messages.

Sometimes they are obvious, sometimes hard to read or out of place and occasionally for me, sometimes out of time.

I intended to write about something I saw on my walk that was very much out of place but as always with life, things change.

My blog was going swimmingly in this direction until I was distracted with another sign, a sign which made me feel it was a story needing to be told. I spoke to a friend this week about a related incident but I had forgotten her story, a story that matters, people matter.

The past has touched me very gently this week, it has both reminded me and taught me things and so I may not have painted those walls on my to do list but I have rested, recharged and remembered and sometimes that is more important.

My blog is about connections and It does not always matter how brief, what matters is that they were a part of our lives and they left a memory.

Over the past few weeks in Britain there has been a poignant series shown on television written by Russell T Davis about life in the 1980’s during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the UK. I still remember the adverts and the leaflets, the stigma and the ignorance that surrounded this time.

I have watched several plays which highlighted these events, ‘Holding the Man’ adapted from the book of the same name by Timothy Conigrave and ‘Angels in America’ which played at The National in London. Two incredible plays which left me broken, this series did the same.

When you look at statistics and the fact that to date AIDS has taken the lives of over 23 million people it puts things into perspective regarding our current crisis.

This is the story of one of those lives:

As an educator I always tell my students that this time is one they will not forget, that certain memories will stay with them forever, the good and the bad and most especially now. This time of online teaching, masks, hand sanitiser and sitting down to disinfected desks.

At school I was a member of the drama club which meant I met pupils I would not have normally been friends with. Mostly because they were in a different year to me.

One such friend was a girl called Merry Sajiwandani. Merry was the younger sister of another drama member Yamikco, who was a year above me in school.

The thing I remember most about Merry was her smile, she smiled such a lot and always seemed to be happy. Something I felt very apt considering her name and our names connected us. Joy and Merry.

Whenever we passed in the corridor we would call each other by our names due to this connection. Not everyone did, it was usually just ‘Whatcha’ but with us it always ended in our names. “Whatcha Merry” Whatcha Joy” and then that smile.

It was a long time after I left school and a chance conversation that I found out what had happened to Merry:

Merry had travelled to Zimbabwe to visit relatives, she was pregnant but not due to give birth until complications arrived and her stay needed to be extended. Merry gave birth prematurely to her son and needed a blood transfusion. Merry was given blood contaminated with the HIV/AIDS virus.

I am not really sure how old Merry’s son was when she died and of all the correct details I just remember how incredibly sad I was when I was told this story through a chance conversation with an old friend.

I have been clearing cupboards this week and I found my school memory box and all of my drama production programmes. I read Merry’s name and again I cried.
This morning a memory popped up on Facebook, an image of a program I had shared seven years ago one bearing her name. It felt like a sign, a story that was asking to be shared.

I remember that during this time, blood began to be tested far more rigorously before being given to patients and then finally tested in regions of Africa. Something postive to come from so many tragedies.

Once again this is a story of connection and although it doesn’t feel such ‘ A Joyful Connection’ in a way it was.

I was given a memory to share, one of a little girl with a smile that for a short time was a part of my life. One that brightened my day every time we met.

Thank you Merry.

With Love,

Joy xxx