Living and Dying

For me Easter is normally a social occasion celebrated  as a Rite of Spring with family and friends, food and festivity, all of it blipped many times across the past 11 years.
This year is different (for everyone) and this blip is slightly different too because it recalls a dear friend for whom Easter was also a very special celebration  although as a religious festival.

The Living Wells of Wales is a splendid recently published book for which the author, Phil Cope, ‘did a Freespiral’ all over the country finding, photographing and describing the holy wells as they exist today. Naturally I turned first to Pembrokeshire to see what he'd written about the wells I had visited. One was over the border in Carmarthenshire: Ffynnon Geler, St Celer’s well. Oh yes, I thought, that’s where Nicole lives, the well and its associated hermit cave is in her garden. I had lost touch with her for a few years and had felt bad about that.
The entry told me what I needed to know. I quote:


“My original text for this section included the following words: Another kind of welcome awaits you at St Celer’s Well, at Plas Geler near Llandysul, where the Russian Orthodox Mission of St Celer of Dyfed is run by the energetic and inspirational Nicole Xenia.” Then I heard that Sister Xenia had died. On 18th October 2018 she was taking her daily walk along her driveway past St Celer’s Well. She was found there by the postman the following day.
This is a little of what [the Russian Orthodox priest] who gave Nicole’s eulogy at her funeral said:
Many of you expressed your surprise – ‘I always thought she was immortal!’ – but many of us also knew about her mortality: her broken bones, her trouble breathing, her numerous aches and pains – some things she did her best to hide from us. However, as one person pointed out, all deaths are sudden. She was active and in motion up until the moment that she wasn’t…”


Nicole Crossley-Holland was 87 so it was hardly a surprise to me that she had died and I was truly delighted to know that she had expired in her own garden close by the saint's well that was so dear to her heart. 
 I had got to know her when I joined her university extension course on Russian History and Cookery (irresistible title, even though it took me half a day to get to its out-of-the-way village hall location and back again.)  Nicole was thrilled by my Russian ancestry and I became teacher’s pet. (She didn't seem to mind that I was an atheist.) She once gave me a Russian brooch and made me promise not to let the others see as they would be jealous. She had quite a fan club in the area and many of her followers attended her courses year after year, even though they were old and frequently fell asleep. Nicole was something of a prima donna and always held centre stage. Now and again  she broke into song to illustrate something she was describing and every so often she would wake up the snoozers with a brisk “Quick now, write down this recipe!”
When organising the ‘feast’ at the end of each year’s course she always insisted making the kvass (bread beer) while others brought an array of platters to meet with her approval – full marks if you attempted a Russian dish. 



Nicole’s great historical passion was the Birchbark Letters of Mediaeval Novgorod:  notes, prayers, bills, billets doux and children’s drawings inscribed on tree bark preserved by the acid soil and still legible centuries later. And I always remember her repeating “So what’s new?” when the wheel of history came around and repeated the same old thing again.


A photograph in The Holy Wells of Wales has Nicole standing beside St Celer’s Well, dressed as always in black and with her face beaming in mischievous amusement. Deeply religious, she had no fear of death and I can almost imagine she might have been saying “This is where I’d like to die!” – and very fortunately for her she did.
(Naturally I can't escape the thought that for so very many in the current state of affairs their death is not as they would wish.)


Postscript
I had forgotten that I blipped Nicole twice and I was especially pleased to see the first of the two which catches  her expression to a T.  Thank you Blipfoto for preserving that memory.
https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1034122

https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1580213