Sunday 6 July 2008

Scattering the ashes

The final farewell.

Today we went over to Crathie, as I had done with my Mum on many previous occasions. This time, though, it was with the urn of her ashes to be scattered around the family plot in Crathie churchyard.

When we got there, the churchyard was deserted, which was just as I had hoped. Suddenly an old guy arrived - obviously the caretaker. And he hovered around the whole time, which was a pity. So the leaving of the ashes in the churchyard was not as private nor as unhurried as I'd have liked it to have been. But we did it, and finally my Mum is laid to rest.

Then we went to Braemar for lunch and on to the Linn of Dee, another place where we had been many times previously with my Mum. And finally to the top dam at Lochnagar Distillery where my Mum and played and swam as a child.

I think it was a fitting tribute to my mother and to the place of her childhood.





'Years have rolled on, Lochnagar, since I left you
Years must roll on ere I see you again
Though Nature of verdure and flowers bereft you
Yet still art thou dearer than Albion's plain
England! thy beauties are tame and domestic
To one who has roved on the mountains afar
Oh for the crags that are wild and majestic
The steep frowning glories o' wild Lochnagar'

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