I guess I should talk a bit about yesterday.  We took my friend Tommy’s ashes to Graveyard Fields up on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  He died in April, but I guess his wife Patsy couldn’t let go of him until now.  Dreamfox saw to it that I got a ride, we met up at SerpentStone House in Candler, and I got a ride to the site with my ex-student Nymue.  Seems she has been making her living as a stripper/exotic dancer lately… and dating the lead singer of Type O Negative… they like the skinny ones .  She has offers to move to New York City, but is resisting because she loves the mountains here too much.

So we all gathered, about 40 of us, at the already overflowing parking lot at Graveyard Fields.  The site was not wheelchair-friendly, but we did everything we could to get Auntie Branwen as close as we could.  I carried her wheelchair down the long steps at the top of the path (and back up again), stronger men than I handled it on the steep path, but ultimately the path defeated us and we had to place her somewhere that she could see us.  We gathered down at the creek, and Patsy and Dreamfox read from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, a book that Tommy had been reading from during his life-ending illness, and then Dreamfox took the bag of ashes and emptied them into the flow of the stream.  (Yes, it’s illegal – we had a member on the outside to bail us out in case we got caught.  But it’s what Tommy wanted.)

Tommy was a man with a generous laugh, a good story, a pinch for the ladies, a loud belch and an equally loud fart.  He was a good friend.  He was a fine mead maker, an excellent stonebutter… I don’t think I could say everything he was good at… although music wasn’t one of his gifts.  I will miss my Irish friend.

Here’s to ya, Kerrwyn Pendragon.

Mordewis