Coming Home to Story

This is how Chris’s memorial looked during the celebration of her life in June. It looks very different now. During the high winds last weekend, a single tree 15 metres away crashed down on top of Sassy Bear. Her head and right fore-leg broke off fairly cleanly and stone carver Lucy Churchill who made the memorial is going to examine the pieces to see if the sculpture can be repaired. I’m keeping everything crossed!

It was a terrible shock to see Sassy Bear so badly damaged and it threw me into a tailspin of grief and crazy, misplaced guilt (if only I’d visited it more often, kept it cleaner, etc. etc.) as if I had somehow caused it to happen. Teddy had to work overtime to get me back on an even keel but was up to the task, as ever. Our lovely friends Miche and Flora rallied round and descended on Folly Cottage with food and wine for supper, lit the fire and generally coddled me all evening.

I’m a bit more together this morning and trying to make sense of it all. The accident seems like a bizarre echo of the night Chris had her seizure in Portugal: a sudden, catastrophic injury to the brain/head. But I don’t want to latch on to some false analogy. Maybe there is no meaning to be found, other than the fact that shit happens.

As I write, some words of WB Yeats are going round and round in my head: “For nothing can be sole or whole that has not first been rent.” I’m coming to think that a re-made Sassy Bear would be a fine testament to Chris’s determination to live and love beyond catastrophe.

In any case, I’ve cancelled everything and I’m staying at home this weekend to be close to my poor wounded girl and to remember Chris’s glorious life as well as her outrageously early death.