Goodbyes Friendships books and bags

This is a long one, so grab a cuppa and sit down.

I have been working on my new book and also thinking a lot about friendship recently, how we manage to find people in our lives that fit, that get us, that know the right thing to do and that sometimes we make friends that don’t really fit and we hang to them even though they can make us feel small, not really friends at all, but others are just golden. I have always struggled to make friends, never had a best friend growing up, always a bit on the edge, but these days I have found a few golden ones and I’ve been thinking how lucky I am to have them. It was also the week I said goodbye to one of them.

Many years ago, I made friends with someone new, I was recovering from cancer treatment and struggling to find my place in my new not normal world where the old no longer fitted but didn’t know what the new was yet. I went to meet her in a bookshop. I was nervous and shy and walked past 3 times before walking in and saying hello. She unknowingly sparked a dream I didn’t know I had that day. I watched her paint a red dragon and that red, that colour flowing on the page, sparked a light in me. I went home and took out my colours and craft box and wool and remembered colour and my need to create. I had been doing wood work, felting and sewing on my machine, but I wasn’t allowed to lift anything, no axes, or knives or sewing machines, so I had stopped and wilted like a flower without sunlight. I was a little lost.

Anyway, I found colour again and my wool and here we are, my dream I didn’t know I had came true while I wasn’t looking and now I sit in my shed and make creatures and write books and these days we are both so busy and don’t find the space to talk as much as we once did, but she is still in the background of all I do.

When I was visiting this friend, years ago now, she showed me the work of someone else.

Look at this, she said, I have bags on order from them. Their waiting list is years but hopefully, maybe one day.

Skyravenwolf was the name of the page and Jackie Morris was the friend.

I followed their Skyravenwolf page and Chris messaged one day to ask about a little reading mouse that might like to live on a narrow boat with them and to tell me that my Sunday Rambles had inspired her to start writing the blog she did every day. That people might like to read her words. (As if they wouldn’t!) We had messaged about me having a weasel bag, on the years and years long list and she had bought a moon boat for Jinny, a lightbringer badger and a stoat of love and such, I felt honoured to have my work with them. I got feathers and bees and such to grace the Shed and we became friends. We talked a lot about this and that and laughed at the ups and downs of running a small business. Chris has a mischief to her, and as you know my motto is kindness and mischief and there was plenty of both in her. ‘One for the book of arsebiscuits’ we would say when yet another stranger would message saying I like your product can you send me a free one for my fundraiser or other such nonsense.

Now I also have another friend called Jenna who is also an artist over at Of Half Imagined Things who was also friends with Chris. Chris told me she and Jen had been talking about needing to have a day off, a rest and how hard it was when you are self employed and no holiday pay. I set up a message group of me and Chris and Jen called ‘accountability friends’ as a joke really, and that we would say what day we would have off each week in it and be accountable to each other. Of course we didn’t, but we chatted and checked in with each other and loved each other and laughed a lot too.

Jen and I became ‘frog friends’, proper ones, who check in with each other, who sense when things are not maybe ok. Jen works hard, they are a single parent home educating their kid and self employed artist. She also raises a massive amount of money for others through fundraising, always thinking of how to help, they always step up. I admire her greatly. I feel seen.

Chris loved making for Jackie, and she told me of a new bag for her in progress, nerves about it being good enough and all that stuff us artists do that make others think what are you on about! I confess to a tinge of jealousy. I was still years along the list for mine… but I did love the connection, the link between friends and seeing pics of Jackie with her bags knowing the love that went into them, the thought, the wildness and, well it made me smile. Friends with friends while out walking. She never finished that new one we talked about, and my bag never made it to the top of the list as she started to struggle with her hands and had to cut back on making bags and then was ill. But we didn’t mind one bit, because our friend was more important, always.

All these friends are wild, part of the earth, perhaps a bit wild, feral. Chris talked about not being ready to live in a house, to run with the squirrels and the goldfinches a bit more, we all live with the nature around us more than people, we all like being alone and the peace of wild things and I think that is why we are all friends. We understand if one of us disappears off into the woods for weeks on end with no word.

Now, a rare thing for me, I don’t make friends easily, I am shy and introvert and a bit odd and wild for some and it has taken me fifty odd years to find three special ones that fit me and I rarely see any of them in person, but I met a new friend. One of my neighbours who is as nature filled and introverted as me, We lived opposite each other for 10 years and said hi hello, perhaps a bit more of a chat in passing but we both hide from neighbours so I rarely see her. Anyway, a chance encounter one day and conversation about dogs and her old dog not managing long walks and her missing them, I dared to say come out with me and Lupin. And she did. And now we walk every Thursday together. A long walk. Sometimes to the woods, the bluebells, the wild garlic, or up the hill or along the river. She told me she makes damson gin and takes a little flask up to the woods on Christmas eve to toast those gone. She leaves butter on the gatepost, I leave porridge for Tomten. She collects pine cones and whittles sticks into magic whisks and sews polar bears. Another wild one. Living right opposite me all these years and I never knew.

All this time I have been writing my next book. It is about wishes. Dreams and hopes and some coming true and some not no matter how hard we wish. About autumn and the cycle of the year, the wild world and all these friends and hopes and wild dreams have been circling my mind. I can’t show you pictures yet, but soon I hope.

And then I woke to the message you never want to hear. One from Jinny, that Chris was in hospital, a brain haemorrhage. And all our hopes and wishes went out to her and we waited and sang songs of hope and wakening and love.

Jen and I immediately messaged each other, what do we do? We do what we always do, we helped. We dropped everything, and did what we could to help our friend and her love. It was a frantic month or so of sorting and searching but it is what friends do, others joined to help with things and move the boat, those golden people who appear and just do. Not about themselves, just what needs doing. We also sang songs to Chris to sing her well, on the blossoms and trees and roots and water and wind. And we all waited and wished and hoped and dreamed and worried and walked in the woods and sang to Chris.

And then Chris died.

I noticed the sadness of those who followed their page, who had been willing Chris better, sending love to Jinny, how difficult it is these days for people who only know through social media, who get to know someone’s life and love them and then they are gone and no way to mark it, but their grief is real and needs to be marked. Something to ponder how we might help that. I hope this blog might help a little too, to share a little of all our shared love for those two ladies and their cat on their little boat.

But for me, my thoughts were How do you say goodbye to a wild friend of the hedge and water and wood?

Jen and I have been messaging about maybe we can meet later in the year perhaps and do a goodbye together to our ‘accountability friend’. We have messaged in our group chat to include Chris as we always did, sending out threads of love to her over the ether, but we felt we needed to something on the week of her funeral too and we are too far away from each other to meet.

But I didn’t know how to say bye to wild friend.

Then Jackie facetimed out of the blue. These days we are both so busy and don’t find the space to talk as much as we once did, sometimes going months without chatting, but there she was. We talked about Chris and she said she was glad she had her bags, and a piece of Chris there. I told her about the conversations me and Chris had had about the bags, how she loved making for Jackie, who had no idea about any of that, it made her smile too. A bit of love winging its way to her. A thread of love.

Then a note from my neighbour’s big chonky choc lab who I had sent some spare wet food we had as he’d had teeth out, with a little flask of damson gin appeared , saying to toast your friend goodbye. Another thread of love appearing. A circle of dear friends, dropping in when needed, No questions, no requests in return, just hi hello, I see you.

And then I spent the day editing my book and doing the dedication for it. Who would I dedicate this book to? The obvious thought you will have is Chris of course. All those hopes and dreams and wishes in the book but then I thought no, another book is for Chris. I know the one that is for her, it is in a spark in my heart just now, forming into words as I walk the woods singing songs to my friend. I didn’t want people to read the book and be sad about Chris, to think her dream didn’t come true. I think it did. She found her love, Jinny and her boat and life with her, in the wildness of wing and water and made so many people full of joy for nature and filled hearts with beauty in her art. A life well lived. A dream come true.

One theme of the book is about hard work and kindness and helping others dreams come true through that, and well, my frog friend does this so much. They stepped up to help without thought for all their own stuff going on just then, which was a lot. Anyone else would have said I would love to help but… but she didn’t. Hard work and Kindness. So my dedication in The Wish Gatherers is to Jenna. And thanks to others who help, who are those golden ones who step up and do just when needed. Who are stars on earth.

And then a parcel arrived. I opened it and burst into tears.

The Kingfisher, goldfinch bag.

Each pocket had something in it, a feather, an otter tag, leaf… a note saying you should have this. a hard thing to part with but Kingisher from her and goldfinch from me.

I cried and cried and rang my friend and cried some more and read her my new book and cried again, I love that it is used, loved, rubbed with walks and and worn with hands and love.

And now I know how to say goodbye to a friend who is everything and everywhere, because she is wild and in every dandelion and goldfinch and kingfisher and squirrel and bluebell and tree and in the water and wind.

So I messaged Jen some love, put the damson gin in the bag and my new walking friend and Lupin came along and we walked till we couldn’t breathe up the hill to the bluebells and toasted Chris for her journey onwards.

But I shall take Chris everywhere with me as I walk the land, to see the Kingfishers and the teasels and the bluebells and wild garlic, the birch trees in Sweden and she can come along and watch me swim in the river. I will take the bag and Chris with me all my days. There is no goodbye, she is everywhere.

Cherish those golden friends, the ones who just know, the ones who step up and in and when needed, who may not be there for months at a time but who appear when needed. Those who know you, deep in your soul. And perhaps think about perhaps it is time to do a quiet walking away from those that make you feel small. No one deserves to be made to feel small. And keep an eye out for those wild ones that walk like you, they may be hiding closer than you think!

I am also aware that many of us make such strong connections on social media and it is hard to know how to mark the passing of someone we know and love online but not know how to. They are just gone, there is no way to say bye. For those of you feeling that about Chris, because I know how many of you she touched, I hope this blog might help a little, that your walking with me may help say bye yourself, and maybe play the Blessing from the Lost Words and maybe go for a walk and tell her on the wind of all the wonders of nature you see, from the dandelions in the cracks in the pavement, to the ducks in the park to the soaring birds to the wild woods, she noticed them all and is part of them all.

And of course so much love to Jinny too whose dream came true when she found her lovely Chris.

And I raise a gin to my friends, I am blessed indeed to have such wonderful love in my life.

Karin