Last night was Silvo’s 21st birthday party. He was a friend from school, one of my good friends in year nine. I love seeing everyone again at all these birthday parties. It gives me a sense of belonging and love. It seems like it doesn’t really matter what happens, I’ll always have school in common with these people and high school was a good time for us, I don’t think it’s something we’ll try to escape.
During the speeches I was thinking about my favourite Silvo stories. The two that some to mind are Christmas 1998 when we did a huge Secret Santa thing among our group (that was usually divided into subgroups). Silvo and Ciaran toyed with me leading up to the end of school, both at times claiming that they’d drawn my name and then saying they hadn’t. Then they sent me on a hunt to find my present. It was fun.
The other memory that I have of Silvo is that he was my friend when I my mum got breast cancer. His mum had had stomach cancer when he was younger and even though he didn’t really remember that much about when she had it I still felt like I could turn to him. One day I was upset and crying, I think it must have been after we knew that mum would survive, because I was worried about getting cancer and dying. Silvo asked me how old my mum was when she got cancer – she was nearly 50, and he said to me, see you’ve got nearly 40 years before you’ll get it if you do, so there’s no point worrying about it now. It made sense and it made me feel better.
