A year ago my friend went quiet. I never met Barbara in person. We occasionally talked about visiting each other but were both too poor to make the trip. I have reached out to everyone and in every format I can think of, but I think she’s gone. She wanted me to protect her writing and safeguard her websites and I can’t because none of the information she sent me is complete enough. I’m haunted by fear that I let her down, by fear that maybe at the end she was alone and stripped of the resources to reach out to me or any other friends.

Barbara thrived in solitude and was wildly and wilfully independent. But she also valued connection where she could find it and I was glad to have her as a friend. I wish I knew what happened, where she ended up. I wish I’d been able to say goodbye.

My Life – Barbara Schaefer

Barbara loved my writing. She loved the wilds. She loved when I explored being out beyond the edges of my maps, trying to understand my experiences and fit words to my life.

I don’t write very much anymore. Occasionally the wilds emerge and every now and then it seems my worlds might collide and I might somehow inherit everything I’ve ever loved. And then something else comes back, a grief, a greyness of spirit, a soul weariness. I don’t dream of the wilds, I yearn for sleep and friendship and laughter and the energy to play with my children. The wilds and the writing and the raw sharing have become part of my former life. I find meaning in my work and motivation for my family. I read the same books on repeat. I cook the same meals. I fight my way through emails and track thousands of tasks. I have left the night behind and become entirely a creature of the day, devoted and exhausted. I feel deeply sad in a way I don’t put into words. I am known by so few now, there’s so few left who know me well enough or long enough to recall I was different once. I feel ashamed and guilty. I hide it. Barbara would have known, would have recognised the change. Might have had a kind word for me, without necessarily understanding my choices. She knew we don’t come back to the night through guilt.

She lived alone in a caravan. I have also lived alone in a caravan. She was desperately poor. I had tried to think of ways I might be able to employ her, not charity but a meaningful exchange. I am a reluctant employer and find the red tape sickening and overwhelming. I never told her about the idea, I couldn’t find anyone to help me make sure it would work. I hope she had enough at the end.

She came to understand her neurodivergence late, as I have. She was complicated and contrary and at times confusing.

She was profoundly interested in meaning and justice and the rich inner world that couldn’t be defined or denied by circumstances. She took great pleasure in language and the process of finding words for things difficult to describe it express, the intangible and the unspeakable. She wrote on her websites, only one of which is still online https://solitary4tomorrow.wordpress.com/

It’s a strange thing to lose someone like this, the absence is so individual, so private. People are complicated. Sometimes a light of friendship fades, and sometimes like this it just ends without ending.

I think of you Barbara. I miss you. I hope it was a good end. I am sorry I wasn’t more careful with your writing and your wishes. I felt so intimidated by the request I didn’t check the details with enough care. I still don’t know how to honour your life and your legacy. I’m not sure how to live or how to grieve or what to do with the wings that occasionally whisper from my shoulders. I am a small creature tucked into a burrow listening to the wind howling overhead. I understand very little of life or death. I would have been there at the end if I could have. Maybe in some ways I’m better at that than being there in the years before. Always so many regrets and such loss. I had words for it once.

Goodbye friend. Be at peace. Much love.