Pinned carefully to my noticeboard at home, so that I couldn’t possibly forget to bring it today, is the
oldest and most precious Post-it I have ever owned.
Once upon a time – almost ten years ago – on an occasion on which I was dreadfully sad, a parcel
from Phoebe arrived in the post.
Inside it was a pamphlet of ten poems about tea, a teabag, and this purple Post-it, which is actually a
hug. You can tell it’s a hug because on one side it has the word 'HUG' written on it in big purple
capital letters, and on the other side it says: ‘from: your nearest purple-haired Phoebe; expires:
never.’
And all of you will know that a hug from Phoebe was a superior kind of hug, a hug that made the
world a brighter place and topped up your soul until you would see her again. At some point in our
friendship I decided that it would be terrible if the hugs I gave Phoebe weren’t as good as the hugs
she gave me, so whenever she hugged me – if there was space – I would lift her up and whirl her
round in a circle, because I thought it was better, and more ludicrous, and because I wanted to make
Phoebe squeal with delight, or – even better – laugh at me.
[[[There were so many Phoeboid things I could have talked about today. I met her more than 20
years ago, back when the world was young; she was my friend for most of my life. There was Mrs.
Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words; Tuesdays in Café Roma; unlikely ice
cream; Arbitrary Day; Phoebe’s endearing interest in medieval illustrations of snails; the way that
where most people might have anecdotes Phoebe would always have adventures.]]]
But I wanted to start here because it brings together the two common threads in everything people
have said about Phoebe over the last week. As Ros said, she had a genius for kindness: for the right
kindness at the right time, for the kind of gestures that endure forever. And she had a talent for
delight. If she took joy in something, no matter how strange or apparently ordinary, she would grab
it by the armful, and she would share it with her friends. She would declare such things amazing, and
make them shine.
It is too hard to be grieving for Phoebe. The world is just... less. And the world does not
need less kindness and less delight: it urgently needs more delight, more kindness, more silliness and
splendidness, more purple. And Phoebe taught us how she did those things, so perhaps it falls to all
of us who loved her, when we are able, to take up the slack, and to carry her sparkle with us back
into the world she loved.
There are never the right words, but there are poems, and I’m going to read a very short poem and
then stop. It’s called Late Fragment, and it’s by Raymond Carver.
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.