Mariam's back with a passion

I had the second most emotional day of the year last week - the first being when I heard about my best friend Mariam's hit and run accident that left her in a coma for six weeks followed by months and months of rehabilitation in Germany.

I was in mid rant over something or other my usually well behaved son had done when I heard a knock on my front door.

We'd been in touch the night before and I knew she'd arrived back in Bahrain from Germany a few hours earlier but was expecting a call to tell me I could go over to see her.

Somehow though I knew that knock on the door was her and I threw the door open to the most welcome sight I could imagine. Slimmer and more delicate than when I'd last seen her, with hair that had gone from long shiny waves to short tight curls, she looked fantastic!

We just stood there staring at each other for a while and then without saying a word hugged for five minutes solid, tears streaming down our faces with slightly hysterical giggling breaking the silence every now and then.

I opened my eyes and saw Mariam's brother still standing at the front door watching our pathetically girlie exchange going on.

I saw all the emotion going through Mariam and I reflected in his eye as he witnessed this reunion that was far too long in the making and it suddenly hit me that the last time we'd seen each other it had never even crossed our minds that we might never see each other again ... and yet here we were hanging on to each other for dear life after very nearly never seeing each other again.

I couldn't get over how well she looked. I already knew what she looked like, courtesy of grainy Skype video cam conversations and I knew what frame of mind she was in but for some inexplicable reason I was still expecting to see a broken, miserable little thing covered in cuts and bruises and in need of some serious TLC.

Yes, she has a whole lot of new scars (or battle scars as she affectionately calls them), a big pin and a whole lot of screws in one leg as well as a slightly protruding clavicle to prove that she got run over by a maniac in a car, and, if truth be told, she's still a little fragile emotionally. But considering what she's been through, she really is the miracle all the doctors said she was when she woke up from her coma.

After our dramatic reunion we quickly fell back into the easy way things have always been between us, with teasing insults flying back and forwards like a Frisbee on acid, laughter with every other sentence and the inevitable easy bickering over the most innocuous of things that always ends with her sticking her tongue out for lack of anything else to say. Yes, we're childish and girlie but always have a lot of fun.

We've done a lot of talking over the last week and half, stopping only to sleep, go to work and order all the junk food Mariam's been craving since the accident, along with the odd trip out and about to catch up with friends she hasn't seen in ages.

As a result of the accident Mariam lost a lot of memories and it's been a real eye opener watching her go through so many "new memories".

Seeing things that happened in the past in a new light, remembering little things that I'd never normally think about again and learning so many new things about each other that we never knew before, it's almost like getting to know each other again, this time with the added wisdom of hindsight.

One of the things that's really hit me though is how unbelievably positive she been through the entire experience.

Six weeks in a coma none of her doctors thought she was going to wake up from and long months spent in a hospital in Germany, going through all sorts of rehabilitation, from memory coaching to physiotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathy and retraining her tongue to lie straight in her mouth after weeks of being bent out of place from having a tube down her throat for so long.

And, through it all, she's never once asked why it happened to her or been down about everything she's had to go through to get better. She's never once cried about what happened to her, keeping the few tears she has shed for what everyone-else around her went through worrying about her.

When asked why she thinks she had to go through it all, she freely admits that she doesn't know. The why doesn't matter, all that counts is that she made it through with a stronger determination than ever before to fulfill all the dreams she used to have.

Mariam has always been an inspiration to me as a true friend I could always rely on before it all happened but to see her take on life with everything she's got after it kicked her so royally in the derriere is a whole new level of inspiration.

As much as I'm going to miss her when she leaves again I'm genuinely excited to see what she makes of her life from here on out.

Whatever happens, she will give it her all and rock at it.