On Thursday I said goodbye to my best friend. Denise and I were friends for 39 years crossing 5 decades. We met on our first day of nurse training. Throughout the decades we shared so much. Hen nights, weddings, children, divorce (mine), grandchildren (Denise’s), holidays, parties, numerous  games of Trivial Pursuit and in the last year illness.

And we danced through most of it. Loveshack was a particular favourite. On one occasion wearing wellingtons with our knickers on our head. Of course they were much smaller then. Our knickers not the wellingtons.

We only had one argument in 39 years. I think the stress of  preparing for exams got to us. We made up 10 minutes later.

So many happy memories. One that now has huge poignancy is a weekend in the summer of 2014. It was the first time we had visited Denise and Rich in their new home. We drank prosecco and danced to Spotify and spent the day at the beach relaxing and eating ice-cream. Denise had everything she always wanted. A cottage in the country, a loving husband, two settled, successful children, a grandchild and a job she loved.

But less than a year later she rang me, told me to sit down, then told me that she had cancer. Such devastating news. I knew then that my time left with her was limited.

What I have learnt over the last year is to be grateful. Grateful for what I have and what I can do. This started with Denise. She told me shortly after her diagnosis that one thing she missed was getting up for work. Something we all moan about but it had been taken away from her prematurely. I then viewed the alarm clock going off at 5.30 very differently. I could go to work and I was grateful for that.

Two months after she rang me l was ringing Denise to tell her that I needed open heart surgery. For a few months our lives became even more entwined as she supported me whilst I waited to have surgery and recover from it and she underwent chemotherapy. But I was going to survive whilst increasingly it looked as if Denise was losing the battle.

When you have been friends with someone since the age of 18 you expect to see 80 together. To have as much fun in the nursing home as we had in the nurses’ home. It is difficult to see my future without her in it.

Two things that remained on her bucket list during her illness (she saw both her children married and the birth of a granddaugher) was to celebrate her 60th birthday and to go back to the Caribbean. My promise to you Denise is to raise a glass to you on your 60th birthday on a Caribbean island.

I am so going to miss you. Thank you for being my best friend.