Christmas Death

This time of year is, for some the loneliest, as families turn their collective backs to society and revel in their good fortune, forget the community and focus on their own. Midges death was forecast by doctors over a decade ago but they hadn't figured on the Fire in her belly. She'd always been fighting, through a care home culture riddled with abuse. Spells in jail. Both her two great loves were stolen from her prematurely. The first in a motorbike crash, the second took his own life. And she drank to contain this poisonous hand she'd been dealt.
My partner was chucked out of home at fifteen. Lived on the streets, sleeping rough. Travellers took her under their wing and taught her how to survive. Sadly their scene became drug poisoned so in steed Midge, 15 years her elder and taught her a new morality that made her who she now is. A surrogatearent where the birth mother had kicked her fragile body from the nest.
The graduates of care homes die young, high jail rates, high prostitution. For many years homes were havens for paedophile networks. Despite all this Midge shone brightly. A gypsy length life. Crammed with colour and adventure.
I cried for her tonight.