Iraena Asher 1979-2004

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I just want to write a memorial for my dear friend who I know is with Jesus.

I miss her very much and even now get teary thinking about how her life got cut short, but, I want to remember the good things about her that made me smile.

Those that knew her were quite often bowled away by her beauty and sunny nature. She was tall, almost amazonian and had a model-perfect figure. But inwardly few people knew she at times struggled...

I remember the first time we met over a cup of tea and chocolate bickies. Actually I was 'introduced' to her even though we both went to the same high school, it was such a big high school that we kinda never hang around. I had been ill, and, my social worker was trying to comfort me, to no avail. I felt I had no friends. I wanted to meet someone like me who had been through what I'd been through..and Iraena was that friend.

That day we bonded and talked about movies and fun things, and also the illness we had that made us do crazy things. She reassured me it was cos I was super-intelligent rather and special instead of thinking I had it cos I was inferior. And that having this illness, you find out who your real friends are. That turned out to be true in Iraena's life.

I will post a bit more when got time.
 
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I hung out a lot with my new friend. We were just finishing high school and did things together that I never got to do with my own sister. I just thought of Iraena as a big sister. She was a year older than me, a bit worldly wise, and FUN.

She was amazingly artistic and talented. She had great fashion sense, was creative in her outfits, although, everything looked great on her. She loved music, and could sing pretty well..I think one time she was in the school talent quest. Her favourite singer was Mariah Carey, although we both liked the usual..Madonna, Whitney Houston, Bic Runga... we would make up little mixed tapes together recording off the stereo.

One time I signed up to be a tv extra for fun so I got to be on Xena Warrior Princess. I told Iraena about this and she joined up too. She got to play an amazonian - what else?!

Whenever I hung out with Iraena it seemed like everything would go our way. Things would happen. It was like, God was blessing our time together. Rainbows would shine, we'd get free meals, we'd grab a bargain out shopping..we'd meet unusual people. I remember one time we went into town and caught the bus home...we got to go on the bendy bus. I don't think they have bendy buses anymore, but I'd never been on one. We sat in the middle, and..went round the bend! We also, cos somehow we missed our ride on the direct route home, took the tiki tour around Auckland instead.

Whatever happened, Iraena made it fun.
 
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I somehow got through high school to the end and Iraena went to a different one and finished early, and decided to find work before deciding what she really wanted to do. Before I went off to university she managed to find a job at an internet cafe in town, her first full-time job. We had looked in the paper that day and she rung up and got an interview. This was way back in 1997 or thereabouts when internet cafes were new and all the rage.
She didn't even have a computer herself back then and I remember her coming to print her CV on our computer.

I thought they just liked the look of her and gave her the job, she was always friendly and smiling. I remember her saying she'd worked in Farmers (a department store) before but got fired cos she talked too much!

It seemed to me that whatever she put her mind to do, it would happen. One time also we read the paper and I saw this ad calling for contestants in a local beauty pageant. I said to her you could enter - it would be fun! I was just joking but actually she did enter to my surprise and I think she represented our suburb..I'm sure she got something like runners up. I took a photo of her wearing her sash at the local mall. She was dressed in a wedding gown, all the contestants were modelling them.
That photo sadly reminds me that...she never got to be a bride.

Which leads me to my next memory...boy trouble.
 
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Iraena's big problem was boys. They were all after her. She had many admirers and once showed me all the love letters she'd received by awestruck boys. huh. I never got any like that (I was awkward and skinny...and wore glasses. Boys didn't like too smart girls) but then I'd never written any either. I don't know if they just randomly wrote her love notes or she'd written first and they'd replied back.

Anyway she was always going with one or another and even after breaking up with them often would remain friends. But she had a special place in her heart for one boy named Julian.
I never met Julian but she talked about him all the time. He was the love of her life. All I knew was that..he was a shore boy (which means...he was probably well off) had a car, and maybe slightly younger than her, as she said she had to teach him things about being a boyfriend (?!).
They went out for many years. I remember I had been away at uni hadn't seen her for a while, when caught up she told me she'd gone to Europe with him. They went to Italy and all those romantic places and I was like wooah. It seemed like they could be a married couple or something. She showed me pictures and they were always hugging and looked like having fun.
 
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Things weren't always rosy with Julian though. Because in those days we weren't christians and when you found a guy sooner or later you slept with them. This led to problems because well. it was confusing. She found herself questioning. Does he really love me or does he only want sex with me?

I don't know if she ever found a good answer to that question. Also, many other guys were interested as well. She found herself flirting with them, and telling me and I was quite shocked. But what about Julian? Oh..it's harmless she said. I wasn't so sure.

I don't know. Sometimes it would seem like they were far too young to be married, and Iraena didn't seem the type to become a mum just yet. Although I knew she absolutely adored children. She finally found out what she wanted to do, which was to be a school teacher in primary school. So, she was not to be a model or a flight attendant or tv guide writer or pop starlet or fashion designer or astronaut after all. (one of the many careers she'd been considering).
 
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My best friend was also one of my most unlikely friends as she was so extrovert and I was kinda introvert. But she was always there when I needed her. For example, one time I got hospitalised and got sent to a time-out facility (which I really didn't like). Iraena was the first person I rang and understood what it was like to just listen to me and reassure me that everything would be ok and I would recover.

Iraena would often surprise me with thoughtful gifts and little funny emails about friendship. When I was away at uni she wrote to me and often told me about the exciting things she was doing, with the enthusiasm of a child. Her favourite thing was to go to the beach. She loved it and was a complete water-babe. I was the opposite, afraid of water!

She also liked baking cookies, I remember, and all domestic things, although she was no Martha Stewart, she liked decorating her room and put my picture that I'd done in School Certificate Art in pride of place in her bedroom. She thought Catwoman was cool and liked that my name was the same as her altar ego.

At her 21st birthday party, she got all her friends to dress up in fancy dress. She said, no costume, no entry. She was all bout having fun. Of course, I went as Catwoman, and it was the first fancy dress parties I had gone to. She went as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. She had this party at a night club in town and she was very popular except...I hardly got to even see her that night which was a bit sad.

My own 21st was rather sedate in contrast. It was just my family and I didn't dress up..there's a photo of me cutting a cake in my Garfield pyjamas.
 
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We did however, go to the Asian Ball. I thought it would be fun for her and me to go, even though she wasn't Asian. (I'm not really either, but, I'm Chinese so I thought, why not?). I think she most wanted to go because it promised blind dates. The ball was being held by asian uni students. So we got all dressed up and went although I do remember her leaving at the appropriate time cos she had work the next day. She wore the dress that she'd worn to a previous ball which looked stunning on her, and I wore a chinese vest my grandma had made me, teamed with a long satin skirt and we got our hair done, she came over to my house and got her photo taken with me, and formal ones at the ball itself.

When we got to the ball, we asked where were our blind dates?? It seemed someone had completely forgot!! Nevermind, we had fun and danced the night away, particularly impressed with the Korean boy dancers. I remember her striking up a conversation with a boy sitting next to her, at random, something I was too shy to do.
 
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I invited Iraena to hang out with me at uni once. I was back at uni studying a Bachelor of Arts and she had been studying travel and tourism. I think she wanted to be a flight attendant at one stage. Glamour and parties and social life always attracted her, while I was more studious and academically inclined. We went into one of my psychology lectures, and she sat in, but listened to my walkman of mixed tape instead of the lecture.
She was more interested in people than ideas.

People seemed to recognise her as she bumped into people she knew at uni. I didn't really know a soul, I was only there to study. My studies and serious outlook meant that I did not really mix in the same circles Iraena mixed in.

She was spiritual though, and open to ideas, except one time I asked her if she ever went to church. She said some friends invited her once, but she found it boring. By the first year of uni I had met more christians and was quite convinced I ought to be a christian too, and at that stage we kind of drifted apart, as Iraena was obviously more worldly than I. I had once asked her what it was like to be drunk...and she said she felt giddy, then kind of changed the subject. I don't think she liked drinking. If she did drink alcohol, it was to be social under under pressure more than anything else. But with the illness we both suffered, alcohol was off-limits anyway.
 
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Iraena's love of dressing up was evident when we raised money for SAFE (save animals from exploitation) downtown. I was into animal rights at one stage even being semi-vegetarian and into all sorts of causes or animal welfare. I said to her we could dress up as animals and it was her idea to be a cat as in Catwoman. So she painted her face and attached a tail and we held out our buckets down on Queen Street. I don't think I was actually dressed as anything! It seemed like she was the one friend I could count on to do something crazy with. She could dress in any kind of outrageous outfit and it would all work. At one stage she had this idea to start her own fashion label. With her flair for fashion, my sewing skills (huh) and her other friends artistic visions she had this whole idea for a company that would be totally unique and fresh incorporating pacific and maori motifs and street style.

It didn't surprise me that later heard she got into part-time modelling with her face and figure and that she would be a model for fashion catalogue shoots.

But that was just one of her many talents. Her real passion lay with children. Since she was so child like her self I think she had great empathy for them, kind of like Princess Diana showed. When her sister had her nephew she was a bit gaga.

I had a dream once after she died that, she appeared to me as a child of nine years old. She wanted me to play hide and seek with her, funny thing in this dream was at a cemetery. I didn't know her at aged nine - but to me, she always stayed young.
 
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It has been many years since she passed now and I miss her dearly at times when I think 'this is something Iraena would have liked'. She may never have achieved her dream of being a primary school teacher or been a mother or a wife but she will always be like a sister to me.

Often I think of what a remarkable person she was, someone who I thought was destined for a special kind of stardom, or doing something great in this world. But it was her kindness that stood out to me. She had a capacity for friendship that made you feel loved. I truly never saw a bad side to her, even though she had bad times, and those times must have been terrifying for her.

It never crossed my mind to be fearful for her, and always believed that she was one of those people who trusted implicitly. It was this naive trust in people that let her down, perhaps..we don't know. But I do know one thing. When she placed her trust in Jesus, He came through for her.
 
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Iraena had three sisters, she was the second eldest. They all had unique names, to me Iraena's name was most special and unusual. I think of her like a rainbow, all sunny and bright, or a ray of sunshine. Her last name I found was even in the Bible! I don't know if she knew this, that it qualified her as a tribe of God's family, but maybe she did know.

After her passing in mysterious circumstances..which, if had known, me and my dad would have picked her up straight away..had she called..it was all over the news, if you google it you can read about it..I was bereft.

It seemed to me she was a great believer in family. She always wanted to be close to people. There's a scripture that says God sets the lonely in families.

Her elders sister told me, many years later while I was still struggling to make sense of it all, thinking one day she'll just turn up like nothing had ever happened...that five days before that terrible night both she and her sister got saved. Apparently the neighbours had been noticing them and there was a bit of domestic trouble (not between themselves but I think it was her sisters' boyfriend) and had come to their door and told them the gospel. Both she and and Iraena repented and accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour right there on the doorstep.

Hallelujah!
What this meant to me was more than you'll ever know.
 
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I have decided to plant a tree in Iraena's memory.
She is going to have a magnolia. I went to the garden centre the other day. I was not thinking of my friend at the time, I just love magnolias. I think they are the most beautiful trees when they are in bloom as they flower first without any leaves. They are very stately and tall, and they look magnificent.

I settled on Magnolia soulangea, which is a deciduous cross. This cultivar is called 'Cleopatra' which does remind me of Iraena. The tree will go in my front yard. I don't have any kind of plaque or memorial stone, but that's what I'm going to do.
 
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I have decided to plant a tree in Iraena's memory.
She is going to have a magnolia. I went to the garden centre the other day. I was not thinking of my friend at the time, I just love magnolias. I think they are the most beautiful trees when they are in bloom as they flower first without any leaves. They are very stately and tall, and they look magnificent.

I settled on Magnolia soulangea, which is a deciduous cross. This cultivar is called 'Cleopatra' which does remind me of Iraena. The tree will go in my front yard. I don't have any kind of plaque or memorial stone, but that's what I'm going to do.

In the end, Iraena did have a very purposeful life after all. ...to be saved!! Praise the Lord!!
 
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