Amy
In November 2022, we got a phone call at about 6:30 (whilst putting our daughter to bed) from a friend. His brother had come across a crash site and, along with an amazing group of people, found my wife’s sister. She had been forced off of her bike and killed by someone who doesn’t deserve the forgiveness that the Justice system has given.
She was 20 and just driving home from a night of DnD at her boyfriends.
She was a pain in the ass and jumped to her own conclusions faster than you can imagine. She was also the literal meaning of aloof, she did everything her way and in the moment and she was a genuinely good person. Something we can all be jealous of sometimes.
A little while after, we were talking about what should happen to her ashes. Her best friends remembered her always wanting to get forged into a sword… of course she did. It was something so on-brand for Amy it was almost comical.
Old Field Forge
And thats what we did, we went on holiday to Wales and I spent the next week in Old Field Forge to craft a sword that looks far different from what I intended, but boy does it make more representative of who it’s for.
The people at Old Field were fantastic characters, from the Chef who had been there mere months but looked and acted like he was the embodiment of smithing to the guy that was a book on Japanese smithing and was my teacher for this week.
I’m not going to lie, making that sword was difficult, far more so than TV makes it look. Hell, every night my forearms were burning and swollen. It was a great experience though and now I must learn how to use a Dremel to engrave the hilt and eventually sit a stone made from Amy’s ashes, and leather work to wrap the handle. She was apparently a big Skyrim fan, so we’re hoping to figure out something on those lines to etch across the hilt, which is a bigger task that it should be as I just can’t get into the game my self.
It’s a pretty messed up situation though. She’s my little sister-in-law that i’ve known since she was 8, and now she’s off… probably the god of mischief on some other world.
I helped her get into college (which she failed on purpose, little sh*t), I’ve carried her coffin, I’ve smithed her sword. This shouldn’t be how someone so full of life goes.
You’ll be sorely missed.
RoadPeace
So if anyone, other than my wife and daughter, ever reads this. Think about supporting RoadPeace, the national charity for road crash victims. They do amazing work on campaigning to make sure that real justice is given out by our justice system.
Here is how they do it: https://www.roadpeace.org/working-for-change/