my aunt’s best friend died on sunday. she lived a couple of streets away from my aunt, and we saw her every now and again when we went up that way. she wasn’t ill, and she wasn’t that old. 56, according to the news report.

a 56-year old cherrybrook woman died after losing control of her blue toyota tarago van on the golden highway at dunedoo about 2.30pm.

at that time, we were in chatswood, just finishing up a lunch of shanghainese dumplings and garlicky eggplant, and trading tales with my cousins about our assorted ailments (me: a hurty sternum; my cousins: a current cold and a recent kidney infection). my aunt was reaching into her handbag for a small foil packet of hard candy made up with mysterious chinese herbs. she gave then to me, and said they would be good for my cough; it had made hers much better.

meanwhile, the van had come off the road, and had flipped and rolled, several times, and had come to rest on its roof. the five passengers managed to free themselves, but my aunt’s friend in the driver’s seat was trapped in the wreckage.

the news report mentioned the other passengers: a female with broken bones, two men aged 58 and 27, a 24-year-old woman, another woman whose age was unknown…

you couldn’t assume that the men were her husband and her son, and the first woman her sister, and younger woman her daughter. the third woman was her other sister, who had only last month been in an induced coma overseas, from a lung infection, and who had miraculously recovered, and come to australia for a recuperative holiday.

you wouldn’t know that the woman trapped in the car had been a nurse, and an artist, a painter with a studio in her backyard. she could whip up a batch of pumpkin scones just like that, and once, when she somehow coaxed the kid away for an afternoon, she whipped up a tray of pink cupcakes, from a packet mix, but still. that afternoon, the kid returned with take-home cupcakes, a case of lovely waxy crayons, a sketchbook, and a pair of enormous sparkly fairy wings. on her fridge door, this woman displayed a picture of a mermaid that the kid had drawn. the last time i saw her, almost six months ago, was across a grimy laminate table, over bowls of mediocre phở delivered by suitably surly waiters.

she didn’t make it out of the van. she died while the emergency crew tried to save her. it’s strange: i didn’t really know her that well, but i feel the break in my periphery.