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I recently finished reading Andrew Bridgeford’s book, 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry. I was immediately drawn into the book when I encountered the following paragraphs on page 3, in which Bridgeford describes visiting the museum where the tapestry is housed, “At length you arrive in the longest of all of the rooms, a long, windowless, narrow corridor with an unexpected bend in the middle. It is here that the Bayeux Tapestry is displayed, carefully illuminated in the darkness behind a thick glass case. It is stretched out in front of you like an enormous strip of film, a great colorful frieze of the Middle Ages, bright and lively, receding narrower and narrower into a dim and uncertain distance. Although barely half a meter wide, the work is astonishingly long, incredibly long for something that old and that ought to be so fragile that if you picked it up it might collapse into shreds. … Embroidered on to a plain linen background in wools of red, yellow, gray, two greens and three shades of blue, the tapestry remains, against all expectations, as bright and captivating as if it had been made yesterday rather than nearly a thousand years ago As you step along the dimly lit gallery, the extraordinary story unfolds. The lined stage fills up quickly with busy figures, in castles and halls, on ships and on horseback, urgently looking here, pointing there, full of meaning, their voices straining through the centuries to tell us something secret and important.”
A small portion of the Bayeux Tapestry (photo from Peter Sjolander's website)
Bridgeford had whet my appetite and I wanted to learn many things—who made this interesting work of art, who commissioned them to make it, where was it made, what story did it tell, what is the hidden history it tells, who owned it over the past hundreds of years, and how is it that the tapestry is so well preserved? Over the course of the book, we learn the history of the events leading up to and including the Battle of Hastings when William the Conqueror led the Norman conquest of England. And, in the process, we learn possible answers to my questions and others as well. Bridgeford conjectures, often convincingly, that instead of telling of the Norman Conquest from the Norman perspective as is commonly thought to be the case, the Bayeux Tapestry really tells the story from the English perspective. Images poured over by experts, interpreted differently.
I was often stimulated, when reading Bridgeford’s insightful analysis, to consider various analogies about the battles that we, as a community, are fighting with sarcoma. What will the tapestries of the struggles of the individual patients, caregivers, and physicians eventually look like? Some will conquer the disease while others will be conquered by it. Many tapestries will be stories of courage, hope, love, and giving. Some will be stories of tragedy and unbearable loss. What colors will be used to tell the tale and how long a tapestry will be required to tell it? Ultimately, the detailed embroidered images that will make up each panel of each tapestry are rendered by those doing the stitching. What will be the hidden histories that decades from now family members we will never know will find as they view the images we leave behind?
When Liddy was in the last few weeks of her life in hospice care in our home, many of her immediate family were with us as well. One day as we were taking pictures of people with her, some of which were obviously, but unintentionally, serious, Liddy queried, “When are we going to take the funny pictures that people will remember us by?” So, we took a bunch of funny pictures. Some of them are, of course, woven into the vision of her tapestry that I see in my mind, “as bright and captivating as if they had been made yesterday”. There is, however, little left to interpretation. Her spirit and courage shines through.
In hope and peace,
Bruce
Bruce Shriver Editor-in-Chief, ESUN
PS: Bridgeford notes on page 4 that, “Despite all of the signs saying ‘Tapestry’ the Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry at all. It is, to be more accurate, an embroidery, for the images are stitched on to the fabric, rather than woven out of it in the true manner of tapestry-making.” Sjolander notes on his website, that, “The Bayeux Tapestry is embroidery that is roughly 20 inches tall and 230 feet long."
V2N4 ESUN Copyright © 2005 Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative
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