My
friend
ELENA
When I was a child my parents had a couple of very close friends who had three children: Elena, her sister and her brother, so she was the eldest of the three. Elena was much older than me, especially during our childhood. But time flies and after some years Elena and I met again because we had common friends and went to the same places. In those days it was when I knew her better; she was a very friendly and lively person and very nice, optimistic and talkative, I liked her. Some of our common friends decided to arrange a birthday party for her; of course she didn’t know anything about it. We booked a lounge in a hotel, ordered the dinner, bought some beautiful presents for her, took a group on for a musical performance and made a picture with all our photographs from the time when we were babies, just to see if she recognized all of us. The party was a complete success; it was a lot of fun, all of us enjoyed ourselves and Elena was very happy, excited and grateful for all. Her birthday was the last day of October and she was 45 years old. Two months later, on December the 27th, we had an unusual warm, sunny and even hot day, without any wind, so I went out with some friends at midday, before lunchtime, to have a snack outside. After lunch, at 5 o’clock, I was trying to have a nap when a very strong wind began and in only a few minutes I started to hear a lot of noises, police sirens and fire engines and a heavy rain started. Since the first hours of the day there had been a gale warning for all the Cantabrico Sea; the weather forecast said at midday that the gale was already in Asturias. All the afternoon and evening the weather was awful: very windy and rainy. The following day, very soon in the morning, a friend of mine called me and told me that something horrible and very sad had happened the day before: Elena went sailing in the bay with a friend in a little sailing boat and at the very moment that the strong storm began, the little boat turned over, they managed to put themselves on the hull, but they were completely wet and the temperature had dropped a lot, nobody could see them and nobody helped them in several hours, so, unfortunately, Elena died. For me, even now, it was a terrible death: first of all, of course, because Elena was a very good friend and, secondly, because I love the sea and sailing and, only a week after she died, I began to go out with a friend who had a little boat and we were every day sailing and fishing, so I think that what had happened to Elena could have happened to me. Santander, 7-January-2.008 Irene Sainz-Terrones