Tuesday, March 4

Memories and stories

This is in the park near our home. It's rather tucked away, so I only saw it for the first time yesterday.

It has a story, doesn't it? I imagine they were lovers, rather disparate ages (22 years between them), but I'll let that little detail pass: it's been known. He (or she) died at the tender age of 71 and she (is Krysia a girl's name? And yes, Alex could also be female) at the even more tender 49, perhaps of a broken heart. In my mind's story it is a broken heart.

Or perhaps they were father and daughter/mother and daughter/father and son... etc., who used to walk the park daily and died so soon one after the other that their distraught remaining relative(s) planted this Judas tree in memoriam of their own broken heart.

But a Judas tree? Maybe the truth is a lot less romantic, and there is hurt and pain and anger there too. All of human life in fact. Especially the last bit.

There aren't very many plaques in the park, so they must have had some special reason to go through the process to donate the tree and pay for planting and the plaque's post and so on. It meant a lot to someone at the time. Does it mean so much now, I wonder?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that Krysia's a girl's name. Their names look possibly of Eastern European/Baltic origin - perhaps a Judas tree has a completely different, folklore meaning.

I, Like The View said...

there is a bike rack in Putney with a similar memorial message

but then, you know I have a soft spot for these things

:-(

the Beep said...

I do know...that's what inspires me to make images of them.

:-)

why the sad face?