Elia passed away a few days ago, said the friend who rang me. My friend was sombre so I was too but I kept thinking, no, it can’t be, Elia was so alive. I imagine her sitting at her desk at her yoga studio, writing something. Or maybe reading something. I think of the black rows of pigeonholes she kept for students which had yoga gear she sold in one half and if you climbed the stairs early, you got to put your stuff in the best pigeonhole which was just the right height.

The room was long and the walls were naked brick and at each station, Elia had put ropes in the wall. The ropes were for various postures to stretch your body longer. You could do downward dog (anamukha svanasana-she would have insisted on the sanskrit) and have the ropes at the tops of your legs. There was another move where you’d sail across the ropes like the figurehead on a ship. That move scared the hell out of me but Elia held me up so it was all right.

The other move that scared me was when you lay on a chair with your feet out one end and your head out the other and looking out into the room with your head down. I put two bolsters and a block or two beneath my head to keep it level. I find it scary to have your head down.

Elia was gentle and kind. She was a quiet person. She was interested in everything and everyone. She was accepted as a popstar once in the US and performed with people who are famous now, but she didn’t like it. I guess you could say she was pre-famous. Her songs and videos are available on iTunes. I looked them up once out of curiosity. I saw my yoga teacher singing her heart out in a music video. Instead she had a son and taught yoga.

I first met Elia when she was teaching at Umina Beach Yoga. I started her classes when I was very fat and very stiff but that wasn’t a problem, and that’s why I stayed. Before that I’d thought you had to be young and slim to do yoga but at this class no one else was. Elia was good with people who were sick: she helped one guy with Parkinson’s Disease and another with cancer. She couldn’t always cure them but she could always help. I wish she was around now to help me with my balance problems, I could tell her how doing yoga every day made them easier to cope with.

She wore black every class and she’d stand at the front and show us which poses she wanted us to do. The top she wore kept getting further out till she looked pregnant. I said something then but she said it was okay. I had a talk with her husband later and he said she’d had trouble with doctors. Then I stopped going to her classes because I ran out of money and I heard later that she was thrown out of her studio and was teaching a few classes wherever she could, and then that she had cancer. I knew she was very sick, I sent her a couple of text messages, but I expected her to get better.

Elia and her husband had been together a long time. They bonded over music and he managed some of Australia’s iconic bands. They had a music studio too, somewhere in Sydney. I saw her once before she went down there. I thought of her husband when I heard she had died. How would he live without her. How would he get into bed without her in it. I went to her private yoga studio to say goodbye to her and there was a bed in one corner. It hadn’t been there before. When I met him he said her presence was strong in the yoga room. I hope he lives a long and happy life and learns to live without her.

For some reason, Elia reminds me of my mother. Both died in their fifties when they were menopausal. I guess they just didn’t want to get old. I don’t blame them. I know it happens to everyone but it’s not for the fainthearted. Painful bones and not being able to do things you used to do, isn’t easy. It can be frustrating and it can be confusing. I hope Elia got what she wanted out of life. I hope wherever she is, that she’s happy.