Where I have been

The past seven weeks since Mel died have been raw and soft; filled with love, tears, time with the family and walks to the beach. I am so grateful for the comfort of the sea. Whatever you feel, you know it’s big enough to take it on; to fold it gently into its endless waves.

Late last year I began turning Ned’s beautiful 29,000 word journal and 200+ photos from their last family holiday with Barney into a book. Finishing that has been my main priority and what I’ve mostly been working on for the past two months. It’s got the same number of pages as my Sourcebook!

Here’s the wraparound cover.

Mel’s pride and joy was her beautiful campfire blanket that had over 1,300 Girl Guiding badges sewn onto it. Before their trip, I suggested that she and Ned and Barney might enjoy collecting eki stamps in Japan. These are special stamps you can find at each Japan Rail Station across Japan, and at some tourist attractions.

In my mind the eki stamps echo Mel’s campfire blanket badges; commemorative images acquired along the way, through taking certain routes and going to special places. However once they got to Japan, my brother and Mel swiftly realised it wasn’t going to be practical to use Mel’s limited capacity to search big stations for rubber stamps, so the plan was reluctantly abandoned.

As part of making the book I decided to find or create images to commemorate each milestone of their travels. For some of the places they visited I was able to find the actual eki stamp design but, where this wasn’t possible, I made up my own. Here are my images commemorating a trip to Tsukiji Fish Market, and a Shinkansen journey from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Laying out the journal made me intimately connected with all the little details of the family holiday that Ned managed to capture with so much care and humour in his writing. I wrote about this for Modern Daily Knitting – about how Ned’s journal reminds me of the importance of capturing the textures of our precious, everyday lives. I have loved working on it.

Last week we had Mel’s funeral. It was a grand event in Chichester cathedral with many Girl Guides in attendance, followed by a smaller family service at the crematorium and a wake that ended up with everyone stinking of campfire smoke and singing badly but enthusiastically around a piano, a guitar and a banjo; Mel would have loved it. Ned and the Girl Guides really did her proud and it was really important for everyone connected by this sad loss to be able to see and hug each other. It was such a beautiful send-off.

I cried so much but laughed a lot as well, and took many photos of Mel’s beautiful blanket. I was really touched to see a badge of a cassette tape that I sent her after she helped me with a soundart project about tape.

One of Mel’s brothers, Iain, noted that some of the badges looked suspiciously like his old scouting ones. I expect everyone at the wake had a memory connected with this blanket and it was so special to be able to really see and appreciate all its details and history – Mel’s history.

Ned had found a way to suspend it so that we could walk underneath to see the underside, then walk back around to see the outside.

The weekend before the funeral, Ned realised that it would be amazing to have a special badge to sew onto this blanket, designed in Mel’s honour. We designed one together and got a batch ordered. They will arrive with me later this summer and I will post them out to Mel’s many friends and colleagues across the world of the Girl Guides. It means a lot to know that the people who loved Mel and knew her through her guiding work will be able to celebrate her memory in this particular, personal way.

It was so healing to spend a day last week with people sharing memories of Mel – stitching them together, like our own comforting kind of blanket. The stories are how she will stay with us. It was really heartening to see the cathedral filled with people who had been impacted by Mel… to know that she made her short time count; that she left such a lasting imprint on the world.

I’m so sad and so sorry that Mel is gone but so grateful for all the love she leaves behind – and that we were lucky enough to have her as part of our family, for a time.

Yours in remembrances and commemorations, Fx