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Posts Tagged ‘Trish’

Our Medieval Wedding

Posted in Bruce Byfield, medieval wedding, Morag Nic Fingon, Patricia Louise Williams, Personal, SCA, Society for Creative Anachronism, Trish, Trish Williams, Ullr Eriksunu, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

We never told our families, but Trish and I had three weddings. After proposing to each other, we jumped a broom. Then there was the civic wedding and our medieval wedding – or, rather, the marriage of Ullr Eriksunu and Morag Nic Fingon, to use our medieval names. Of the three, the medieval wedding is the one we enjoyed the most and spent the most money on.

The festivities were at Coyote Creek Campground in Surrey, in the height of the summer heat. We had worked for weeks beforehand to prepare, sewing new costumes for ourselves and planning bits of theater to enliven the proceedings.

Shortly after sunset, we started the event with the bride barter. As a Hebridean widow, Morag claimed the right to barter for herself. She sat in her high seat by the fire, surrounded by female attendants, while I marched up with my attendants to announce my attentions and my gifts.

I had gone to some effort to keep the gifts secrets while I was making some of them. But, on presenting them, I downplayed them in a mimicry of modesty designed to draw laughs. For her part, Morag examined the goblets and rabbit skin purse, checking their construction and passing them to her attendants, many of whom made risque remarks. The final gift was what swayed her: phials of saffron, a luxury spice of fabulous price in our medieval period.  After consulting with her attendants, Morag rose and formally handsealed the agreement, making it a formal contract.

Surrounded by torches (and more remarks), we moved in procession to where the local bard, Daffyd ap Moran (aka Gary Wadham) was waiting in his green Druidical robes. Although not a practicing pagan, Daffyd took his role seriously, fasting for a day before the ceremony. We had a literal handfasting, with our hands tied loosely together by a leather chord, and a ceremony that included us grasping a wooden ring while exchanging vows and copper bracelets made by our friend Jaqueline and drinking at the same time from a marble cup full of mead.

After the mead came the gifts from friends, and singing late into the night. Finally, we retired, with our attendants guarding the tent to prevent the otherwise inevitable chivaree.

Then, just as everyone was falling asleep, a muttering cry of, “Grendel, grendel, grendel,.grendel!” went through the camp. It was Bolverk of Momchilavich, the foremost women fighter of the local medievalists, playing the monster from Beowulf.

Our attendants refused to let us stir from the tent, but we were told that she had wrapped some old furs around her, and had trundled through the camp bent nearly double. She was met at the pavilion by her husband Sir Seamus, who was playing the role of hero. I suspect that the actual Beowulf never greeted his victory with, “I got the mother!” but the next morning there was a giant arm pinned to the pavilion to mark his victory.

The next day, we slept late, and oversaw the final cleanup of the site.. At home, we seemed to require endless trips from the parking garage to our apartment. Most of the boxes we left in the spare room for later storage.

“So that’s marrying done with,” I said as we collapsed on our bed.

“It had better be,” Trish said, and before we fell asleep, I remember thinking that the last twenty four hours were a good memory to have.

And they still are, although the pictures are grainy and damaged, and  we haven’t seen most of the people who  were there for years.

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Bringing in the roses

Posted in Bruce Byfield, gardening, Patricia Louise Williams, Personal, roses, Trish, Trish Williams, Uncategorized, widower, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

My partner Trish loved miniature roses. At one point, she had over forty plants on the balcony of our townhouse and on the courtyard outside. On weekends, she would spend several hours in the morning caring for them. Then, when we did errands in the afternoon, she would take the flowers, wrap them in moist paper towels if it happened to be a hot day, and distribute them to the staff of the stores and services we visited. If any were left over, we put them on display in vases about as high as my thumb, mostly around the computer.

They were very much her concern. I appreciated them as little points of symmetry and color, as well as for their names – Pinstripe, Pandemonium, Cartwheel, Carousel, and Black Jade – but had little to do with them except when buying one occasionally for her.

At one point, Trish had over forty plants. However, by the time she died, the numbers had dwindled to half a dozen, partly through normal attrition, but largely because her final illness kept us busy with more basic concerns.

By the time I had steeled myself to clean out the remains, they were down to four, two of which were not looking overly healthy. Never having been a gardener, I didn’t mind too much. I had more basic things on my mind, and I gave them minimal care only because I associated them with Trish.

But about a month ago, I bought some basil, which I use in spanakopita and lasagna. Somehow, the splash of green made the living room more home-like.

Inspired by that realization, I decided to bring the surviving Black Jade inside. Far from its former glory, it is now a sprig barely twelve centimeters long, clinging to the original root structure, and I thought it needed some shelter in order to survive the winter. Like the basil, it seemed to make my surroundings more comfortable.

Then, last week, I was walking through New Westminster when I saw a half dozen miniature roses on a rack outside a dollar store. One, I was sure, was a Black Jade. On impulse, I picked it up as well as two more.

At home, I put the white and peach flowered plants on the television cabinet, and the Black Jade on the tea tray that I use for a coffee table. They seemed to crowd the living room a bit, but, considering their effect, I decided they belonged there.

They’re not a shrine to Trish. Thirty months after her death, that would be desperate, and more than a little pathetic. But they are a memory of happy times, and they relax my eye as much as the art on the walls.

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Keeping the roses alive

Posted in Bruce Byfield, death, grief, mourning, Personal, roses, Trish, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wanting to feel useful, today I tackled a task I’ve been putting off: cleaning up the plant pots from the courtyard outside my door. I imagined that I shirked the task because it would be dirty and exhausting, but I had barely begun before I understood that the real reason was I didn’t want to face the memories that lay in wait for me.

Except for the laurel, none of the several dozen pots had been planted by me. It was the sole survivor of three that Trish and I had bought years ago when the strata council had chopped down the fir that shaded our balcony. The others had quickly died, and this one had been moved to the courtyard when our deck was last rebuilt, only to die in last summer’s heat wave when I was too distracted to notice. Our parrots Ning and Sophy had enjoyed having it against the outside of the living room window, since it gave them a hidden place from which to peer out at the world.

The rest were the remnants of miniature roses and one or two efforts at growing mint and other herbs. I had never had a hand in those. They were Trish’s, and among some people she was as well-known for her roses as for always carrying a craft project with her.

Before the carcinoids took hold, an hour or two in the evening or weekends was a part of her life. She was proud of them, having never had much success with gardening before, and she kept her notes about them in a leather-bound book stamped with Celtic knotwork designs. She enjoyed, too, going to the monthly meeting of the local rose society, and she delighted in the names of each rose: Pandemonium, Golden Amber, Black Jade, Pinwheel, and all the rest.

But the real point of growing the roses was distributing the blossoms, few of which were over three centimeters in diameter. Regardless of whether she was going to her job, or we were going shopping at Westminster Quay, the parrot shop, or a bookstore, her departure was always delayed by her snipping the latest blossoms. At summer’s height, she would soak paper towels and carefully wrap the blossoms to preserve them. When she got to wherever she was going, she would hand them out, to the delight and occasional puzzlement of the recipients.

I suppose you could rationalize the distribution of the blossoms by the fact that Trish had several dozen plants, and, when they were blossoming, we hardly had room in our townhouse for more than a few blossoms. But, although we never talked about why she went to such efforts, I knew that she enjoyed offering the small gifts that she had produced to those she saw regularly.

Once, a cashier snootily refused them, and we never shopped at that bakery again. For my part, I was furious that such an innocent and pleasant gesture should be met with hostility. Most people were pleased by the gesture in the middle of their workday, and some came to look forward to it so much that they were visibly disappointed if Trish had run out of blossoms or the plants weren’t producing that day. To some distant acquaintances at Westminster Quay, she was simply the Rose Lady.

But as Trish sickened, she had less energy for roses. One by one, their numbers feel due to frost or disease, and, increasingly, the losses were not replaced. When she could, she still enjoyed tending them and distributing the blossoms, but, with each year she had less energy for anything so active. Nor did she want my help; the roses were her activity, and, not being a gardener and increasingly worried myself, I did not offer help as often as I could.

Two years ago, her health was poor enough that she hardly had time to fertilize the roses, let alone prune or keep them free of disease. Last year, as she struggled with pneumonia and slowly died, she had no time for them at all.

Today, I found that only three rose bushes survived, and one of them will need some concentrated attention to thrive again. But I decided that, despite my lack of gardening skills, I will do my best to keep them alive. The effort is a way I can continue to connect to a time that, nine months later, already seems so fabulous and distant that sometimes I wonder if it existed at all.

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