A big day... – in memoriam Margaret Kay

Hiya again

The morning sun burns off the frost (28 Nov 2009)

Today has been a day full of activity, adventure, people, new experiences, new places – the kind of day that makes me feel alive. Some of you may find me tactless in view of what this post is mostly about – remembering someone who died not long ago. But I know she would understand: it is in the face of death that life becomes most vibrant, most precious, most intense.

Jackdaws gather at dusk (Lynnside, Oban, 29 Nov 2009)

Why was today such a full day?
I'm back from a trip to Perth, the town in the eponymous Shire in the eastern parts of Scotland. If you look at a map, Perth and Oban are more or less on the same latitude, but the land over there feels very different indeed – much flatter, with a huge sky. In between our two towns lie some formidable mountains. Today there was snow on the ground in patches, and mounds of dirty snow where the snowplough had cleared the road earlier this morning.

Snow on the ground near St. Fillians

I travelled to Perth to spend a few hours in the company of family and friends of someone who made my first 18 months here in Oban even more special than they have already been.
We celebrated Margaret's life in a beautiful humanistic ceremony that was full of tears and laughter and colour, colour especially.
Margaret died a week ago today, at the great age of 91 years and seven months, which in my book makes her nearly 92. Margaret was an extraordinary woman and she would have enjoyed the kind of day I have just had. Sadly, I never knew her in the fullness of her life, when she managed a house full of children and a big vegetable garden, or later, when she went off on archaeological digs all over Scotland.
While I don't agree that death doesn't make a difference, I do agree that those we love will never die completely because they live on in our hearts. And we can go on having conversations with them, and if we listen very carefully they may even answer – or we answer for them, because as we imagine talking to them, we change infinitesimally, and that enables us to see things just that bit differently.
It is to Margaret Kay's memory – and to her wonderful family – that I dedicate these images of snow on the ground near St. Fillians, and from between Crianlarich and Tyndrum, …
… from Tyndrum itself (where I love to stop at the Real Food Café), …… from between Tyndrum and Dalmally, where the road rushes down the glen almost in parallel to the stream, and the train, and where my heart soars with the joy of coming home …
… and of dusky but snowy Ben Cruachan and some hills of from Glen Lonan:

I know Margaret would have loved the colours, and the mood – and I hope you will, too.