Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Between stretches of truly not feeling up to dealing with email and LiveJournal and everything else, and stretches of simply not feeling ready to deal with this with the care it deserves, and a very busy weekend in between, I've taken my time getting to writing this entry...

I have a great many friends, far more than my share. Being in a subculture that encourages some fuzzy boundaries and being a friendly sort, I also have a huge number of acquaintances and in-between-friend-and-acquaintance folks I casually refer to as friends. But today I speak of a close friend, an old friend, one who was unquestionably and unambiguously a friend no matter what culture or subculture's definitions and nuances apply to the word.

The weekend before last, cancer claimed one of my friends.

I mourn. And I remember. And I feel responsible for doing things I haven't really felt up to doing -- mostly trying to make sure information gets to places that I can speak to more easily or quickly than some other people can. And I try to sort the various things I'm feeling. And gee, a lot of that all really fits under the first thing I said: I mourn.

Two decades ago, in the early/mid-1980s, I heard music coming from a room at Disclave (a local science fiction convention) and poked my head in to investigate. What I got was the start of an education. There were others in the room, welcoming and friendly, but I really credit two people with introducing me to filk, and Cheryl Lloyd was one of them. Whether it's a fair attribution or a trick of memory, I give her the lion's share of the credit between the two. (Or, depending on your opinion of filk, the blame. But if you're going to be that way about it, I got even: if I remember correctly, I got her hooked on guitars.) There was the beginning of something rather more, but we settled into friendship, some years keeping in touch with each other better than others. (Email and LiveJournal helped.) Eclectic in her interests, like many of my friends, there was never a shortage of ideas for us to toss back and forth in conversation (though there were plenty of times our conversations left me wishing I'd done more research in whatever topic we were discussing). In the midst of her own health and financial troubles recently, she was still concerned for my well-being and looked for ways to try to help me.

For the past ... I've lost count ... years, I have camped with her household, Caer Edgemere, at Pennsic. Last year the health problems that eventually killed her kept her home. She was not the only one absent -- our camp was tiny and everything felt odd -- but this year it'll probably feel strange in a completely different way, with most everyone else there, but Cheryl gone. And not even sending SMS messages to my phone any more.

Sometime after her last LiveJournal entry, I got word that she'd gotten worse and was in the hospital. And that the doctors had said she probably had a few months left to live. I didn't manage to visit in time. My own health problems, gigs, and a "must run around in circles and jump through the right hoops NOW or I'll have to get rid of my car" problem kept me away. I spent some time trying to figure out whether I had the means to set her up with email access in the hospital, and later found out that I wasn't the only one working on that problem. A few days after I came home from pushing my body way too hard at Conterpoint and the Potomac Celtic Festival, as I was about to start using email and the phone to find out whether she was still in the same hospital and what the visiting hours were, I got word that she had died over the weekend. On top of the grief, guilt that perhaps I hadn't tried Quite Hard Enough to get to her bedside in time. I'm not sure which is worse, feeling like this, or how her sister must feel. Her sister did do what she could to get here from out of state, and had airline tickets in hand, but Cheryl didn't last long enough for her sister to arrive. I find myself contemplating time and time again a bit of dialogue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and unless I miss my guess, many of you will have figured out which quote before finishing reading this sentence.

Buffy: Was it sudden?

Tara: What?

Buffy: Your mother.

Tara: No. [pause] Yes. [pause] It's always sudden.

Cheryl's not the first friend I've lost, and she won't be the last, but that seems irrelevant. She's the one I'm feeling "No ... Yes ... It's always sudden" about right now. I mentioned being "in brain-spin" a few days ago; she's why.

I also wasn't sure whether to write about her under the name of her main online persona and LiveJournal username but try to leave out details that she'd deliberately obscured for people who didn't know her in real life, to write about the person I'd known so much longer than LiveJournal has been around but try to leave out details which would link her to her LJ name, or to just write as I have here, saying what I feel I need to say about my friend even though it'll be easy for those who didn't already know to make the connections. I'm still not sure what the right answer is, but this is the answer I'm going with.

Cheryl was a SCAdian, a science fiction fan, a filker, and the maker of stuffed lizards with surprising amounts of personality for cloth creations of that sort. She was also known in Markland (though I'm not sure whether she thought of herself as a Marklander or not). If you don't know her by name, you may know her from her lizards at science fiction conventions or at Pennsic.

There will be an online memorial service for her character and herself on the muck she played on, tomorrow night. (The character had the same name as she used on LiveJournal.) It is my understanding that many of the people in the muck only knew her by her character, a genderless creature, so my guess is that folks should be careful of pronouns there.

There will be a RL memorial service for Cheryl Lloyd on Saturday, 26 June, at 3:00 PM, at The Episcopal Church of Christ the King, 1930 Brookdale Road Baltimore, MD 21244. This is the same place as her SCA barony holds weekly fighter practice. Directions to the church can be found here. People who only knew her online are encouraged to attend, as well as the folks who knew her face to face. And since the people organizing the service do not know all the communities and fora she was a part of, or how to reach everyone who knew her, they're asking for help getting the word out. So if you know places this information should be posted that I don't, please pass it along. (I've already posted to rec.org.sca, rec.music.filk, and rec.arts.sf.fandom.)

I do not know whether anything is already being planned for Pennsic. If I hear anything...

This feels inadequate and unfinished, but if I wait until I feel like it's done, it'll never get posted.