We all knew Debs' days were numbered. But at the Winter Solstice weekend, just over three weeks ago, none of us realised how few were left to her... to us. There she was, overseeing that time of fun and frolic - and caught here captaining the Under the Sea Ale - with less than a fortnight left to live. We had all noticed how tired and drawn Debs seemed, but none of us could anticipate that ten days later she would be dead, consumed by her cancer.
News from a friend, who arrived at
her bedside too late to say goodbye:
"... forewords to explain and explore the absence of spirit in that shell of drumming body, heart out of it- features yellowed and mouth ajar: the door to breath and blown away."
Four months ago she was drumming and dancing at her own wedding, she and Peter celebrating Life and Love, and surely understanding that all their friends would be coming together again all too soon...
So a return to Wellington for me, a place so recently visited, to honour Debs' memory; to support her husband - she and Peter both so supportive at my own husband's funeral not so very long ago.
Family and friends gathered, overlooking Cook Strait, on a gale-blown day, to celebrate Debs' life.
Her Morris dancing companions including White Rose Ladies Morris,
the Brittanic Bedlam Morris Gentlemen,
and massed pipe bands of Wellington.
Braving a ferocious downpour with the massed Morris dancers of New Zealand, they provided a final dramatic funeral cortege as the hearse departed for the crematorium.
Time then to re-group at the Kelburn Pub with its diminutive, kilted landlord and warm hospitality
Time for some good natured competition between bandsmen and morris dancers;
and as the evening drew on, the discovery that what a Scotsman wears under his kilt is revealed when he takes to the Morris!
Let no-one say to me that only the Irish and the Maori know how to do a Wake or Tangi.
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