In Memory of Karen Bush -- Susan Price

 

Karen Bush

KAREN BUSH (aka Madwhippet) was a founder member of Authors Electric and, indeed, edited and produced some collections of short stories by our members, as well as posting many blogs for us.

 Karen was also a member, as was I, of a small group of writer friends, all members of The Scattered Authors Society. We kept in regular touch via email and Zoom.

At the start of May 2023, we met for our ‘first Tuesday of the month’ Zoom and there was Karen, chatting and joking, as usual, with her beloved whippet, Dulcie, curled up on the sofa beside her.

 

 

 Extract from 'Dulcie's Diary': Pffft ... I has a cut on my paw. I have had it hibiscrubbed and now I am guarding it to keep Muvva away with any other stinging stuff she might want to put on it. If it needs to be any cleaner I has a perfectly good tongue thank you! Now pass me the chicken to help me recover ...

 

 

A few days later, around mid-May, Karen mentioned some stomach upsets. The rest of us sympathised but otherwise didn’t take much notice. Who doesn’t have the occasional stomach upset?

On May 25^th, almost exactly a month ago, Karen emailed me to say the stomach pain had become so bad, she’d taken a taxi to A&E where at first, she was thought to have appendicitis. Then scans revealed that her pancreas, spleen and liver were cancerous. Karen asked me to tell the other members of our group.

“No waily waillies needed please,” she wrote: “no get well cards or stuff like that as it just saps already low morale even more.”

I was shocked, but... It had been diagnosed, right? Things wouldn’t be so bad now.

Well, they would be bad, they’d be appalling— but there would be chemo and radio-therapy and operations and after a horrible time, Karen would recover and we’d chat again, with Dulcie dozing between us; we’d go and see Shakespeare at Stratford, since Karen loved Shakespeare. She’d finish the novel she’d always wanted to write as a progression (as she saw it) from her excellent short stories…

But instead of going home, to Dulcie the whippet, to her writing and all the many crafts she practiced so skilfully (materials and tools spread gloriously over every surface)… Instead of that, she moved into a hospice. She was ‘at end-stage.’

How could that be?

Like her sisters, like all her many friends, I can’t grasp it. How did we get, in three weeks, from Karen cuddling Dulcie on the sofa and making jokes to ‘at end-stage’?

At the start of this month, on June 2^nd, twenty-two days ago, Karen phoned me from the hospice garden, sounding exactly as she always had, talking at record-breaking speed, as she always had, words tumbling out.

“Stop snivelling!” she commanded. “It’s all right, doesn’t matter, got to die of something and my family, we’re always popping off from bowel cancer or lung cancer or something— And anyway, there’s loads of morphine here: Whee—eee--eee! Stop snivelling!”

Karen was not a sniveller.

On June 7^th, five days later, the phone call came from Claire, Karen’s sister, with the news that Karen had died.

Claire and Lesley, her other sister, were with her. Had travelled to and fro for hours to see her, given up their own lives, had been there with that quietly desperate, grinding, every-day heroism that isn’t celebrated enough. Thank you, both of you. I know you don't want or need thanks, but thank you anyway.

May 25^th to June 7^th.  Diagnosis to death. Two weeks.

Two weeks and my kind, generous, funny friend with the mile-a-minute chat, had gone.

Karen was a horse-mad child and grew up to be a horse-mad adult. She trained as a riding instructor, held British Horse Society teaching qualifications and worked at the famous Suzanne’s Riding School. Since no teaching job pays very well, she started writing articles to supplement her income and was published many times in Horse and Pony, Pony and Your Horse magazines. (If you have back-copies, look for her name.)

Karen in action. (Well, Karen and Flash, her horse.)

Her horse was called Flash, and she supported him in his old age, visiting him often.

Loving dogs as much as horses— over the years, she kept several rescue dogs— she started writing for dog magazines too.

Oh, and among many other skills, she could handle a longbow. Whether she could loose a Parthian shot from the back of a galloping horse, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

She’s certainly sent a dart through a great many hearts as she leaves us at such speed.

These past weeks, ever since I was told of her death, Karen has been at my elbow.

I go to the shelf where I keep my Terry Pratchett books, because Pratchett has always been my comfort reading. Karen is right there, by the bookshelf, because she loved his books too  and we often laughed about favourite passages and characters. (Vimes! Gaspode! Angua!)  Without Karen's prompting, though, I would probably never have gone beyond the Disc World.  It was Karen who put me on to The Amazing Maurice, Tiffany Aching, and The Carpet People. She was an avid and intelligent reader, always ready to share books she'd enjoyed.

I switch on my kindle instead and up comes the Falco book I've been reading— and why am I reading Falco? Because Karen enthused about the books and told me I should read them. And, because we shared a sense of humour and so many interests, it was generally the case that, if she liked something, I liked it too...

Which reminds me— in the bottom of my wardrobe is a large carrier full of books Karen lent me. Whenever I visited her, she filled a bag with a selection from her book-shelves. She’d send me off with them, saying, “Now you've got to come back, to return them, and get some more.” That’s how I came to read Robin Hobb’s books, and the Game of Thrones series. And now, Falco. And the Flavia Albia series. She was right, too. I loved them. And will never read them, see them or hear of them again without thinking of Karen.

Did Karen’s Loving Lending Library have other members? I suspect it had many.

Our Flag Means Death

I switch on the TV for distraction and am reminded how many of the comedy shows I now regard as 'must-see' were first flagged up for me by Karen. Inside Number Nine, for instance. The first time I ever watched it was at Karen's house. She also told me that I must watch 

Staged and, most recently, Our Flag Means Death.

I run away from words and story-telling, into my garden-- and Karen’s there, waiting for me, because she’d been ‘growing her own’ on her allotment for years. I was always asking her advice, which she was always happy to give.

“You don’t want to go buying those bags to grow taters in, they’re rubbish, grow ‘em in empty compost bags, it’s easy, just make holes in the bottom and roll ‘em down like a sock, then you can roll ‘em up as the ‘taters grow and you earth ‘em up.”

Thanks, Karen, I have Pentland Javelins and Saxons growing in old compost bags. And some on the compost-heap, which is another tip you gave me. I'll never plant a potato again without thinking of you.

An email arrives from someone who likes my Sterkarm books… My Sterkarm characters are, supposedly, superb horsemen. If I manage to convince anyone of that, it’s all down to Karen, since I barely know one end of a horse from the other. Casual, knowledgeable, mentions of shortening stirrups and tightening girths:- that's all Karen's work.

We had an agreement, Karen and I, that we would read each other’s work in rough and suggest amendments… I did edit some of Karen’s stories but I fear I gained from the arrangement far more than she did. Besides advice on all things horse, she zeroed in on faulty structure, characters who weren’t working and clumsy prose. Her suggestions were always valuable.

There seems hardly any part of my life that Karen, my friend, wasn’t enmeshed with. And now there's a hole, where she was torn out.

The Five Pound Pony

I take down her book, The Five Pound Pony and Other Stories. It’s a delight. All the stories are about horse-mad children, like the child Karen had been. Each fictional story is followed by a short, fascinating article about such things as the Shetland Pony Grand National, or Model Horse Competitions.

I remember first reading the book on a train, at a time when I didn’t yet know Karen very well. Despite my minimal interest in horses, I was drawn in, identifying with the characters’ longing to ride and be around horses. I finished the book thoroughly impressed. If writing can reach out to someone who doesn’t much care for the subject, draw them in and make them feel for characters unlike themselves… Then that is good writing.

I think Karen tended to underestimate her own fiction writing. She shouldn’t have done.

It’s bitter and cruel that, just as she’d begun on the novel she was so keen to write— she’s gone.

A dozen times a day I find myself simply coming to a halt and thinking: Oh, Karen.

How can she be gone when everything reminds me of her?

A month ago, no one knew she was ill.

Karen Bush, my talented, funny, knowledgeable, generous, hospitable, loving friend, gone?

I miss her so much.

With much sympathy to her family who, I know, miss her even more.

Karen wrote, or co-wrote, so many books on the care and training of horses and dogs, that it would be impossible to list them all here, but follow this link and most of the books that will come up on that Amazon page will be Karen's.

        Karen's website   and the new website she set up about the novel she was writing.