Around this time, a week ago, a friend phoned and asked if I knew if anything had happened a common friend of ours. Some strange posts had appeared on his Facebook page.
My wife could verify that there was indeed posts on said Facebook page that looked suspiciously like the kind of things you write when someone has passed away.
Not long after a second friend contacts me with the same questions and feelings of foreboding. Sadly, it turned out to be true.
Per, my best friend, my comrade in arms in both Historical fencing and in medieval re-enactment was no more.
Nothing has been said for certain even if more than a week has passed. Maybe his family is chock aswell. He left a brother behind. He had no children of his own. But he was engaged in sooo many activities. He was always tripled booked up BUT he ALWAYS showed up. He was always ready to lend a helping hand.
Sure, he was 63 but still no huge age in modern Sweden. Possibly heart attack.
He was my rock during the divorce. He helped me out in more than one monetary pinch. He was always happy to come by for a cup of coffee and a chat about this and that. We were making plans for galavanting around on medieval markets as our usual duo swashbuckling ne´erdowells.
We were planning for the next year when Gothenburg turns 400 years. We were planning to show of some period rapier fencing in period clothes. We had our longtime goal of building a light medieval siege engine, a mangonel or such, that could moved in parts and assembled on the appropriate location.
All that is now in the passed or in the future that will never be. There is a hole on my heart and in my soul like I have never felt. My best friend is no more. Sometimes I cry and the next moment I cannot even believe it is true. Then time passes by when I forget it until something reminds me, usually something pink. He was known as Mr Pink since he always marked his swords and stuff with a piece of pink ductape or ribbon. It was such a well known fact that we used to joke in the HEMA club that if something got something pink upon it, that stuff was Pers by right of Pink.
I had a special coffee cup with Moomin Trolls, my part of a pair that me and my ex-wife had. It became Pers cup for coffee. Now, he will never drink from his cup.
Life is the same, but still not, because somehow there is a void in me now.
I have such sorrow that it does not even know were to go.
