Thurso II (Donald Thomson): Week 13 – 29 April

I’ll be honest, I’ve had better weeks.  It was the anticipation. 

It was Gordon’s birthday on Friday, which seemed a fitting day to scatter some of his ashes.  Earlier in the week, I’d arranged to pick them up from the funeral directors’, where they’d been since being returned from the crematorium in Inverness. The funeral directors’ said the ashes could be kept there indefinitely, until I was ready.  I wasn’t sure I was ready, but on Thursday, I collected them.  It’s a sad thing to do; even if you’re feeling fairly chipper, a debilitating tsunami of sadness comes out of nowhere.  At home, the box was placed in the sunshine on the sofa in front of the lounge windows, Gordon’s morning knitting spot.

At the end of the path

On Friday, using a container which coincidentally had been used for Gordon’s sourdough starter, I decanted some of the ashes.  There is slightly more fine dust in the kitchen now . . . A friend of both of ours had arrived earlier; we’d arranged to travel together to Sarclet, and we set off in the changeable weather – warm spring sunshine and heavy downpours, but calm.  We didn’t need to be concerned about standing upwind. 

The Gloup

We started our walk at Sarclet by following the John o’Groats trail southwards to a gloup a little way away – a large hole in the ground that goes down to the sea.  We could hear the swell booming far below.  I had thought to pour some of the ashes there, but it was unreachable, being enclosed by a fence and surrounded by steeply sloping ground.  So we continued on, looking for a suitable alternative, until I found a scenic spot for some of the ashes.

The threatening rain cloud we’d seen earlier now reached us. We upped hoods and headed northwards to the harbour, and down to the rocky beach.  I searched for the spot in a photo taken years ago where Gordon had sat, looking out to sea.  The boulders had shifted, but think I got close.  I moved a few smaller stones aside to form a small well and poured in the remaining ashes.  While I did this, my friend read a poem:

Antidotes to Fear of Death from A Responsibility to Awe, Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death, I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir
Myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometimes it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral
Bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a
Chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

Sarclet

Then the waves beckoned, and I rinsed the container and carried some seawater back, pouring it on the ashes to ‘bed them in’, and replaced the stones.  After a few moments, we walked back up the path to the top, looking for wildflowers and admiring the views.  The primroses are out, we also found some violets, and the sea thrift is in bud.

On Saturday, to add insult to injury, I had a crisis of confidence regarding the neckline of the gansey.  The stitches around the neckline were picked up, but there were far too few.  Initially I tried to fix it, but it was such a bodge job that it wouldn’t be acceptable.  It’s been undone, hours of further calculation have been undertaken, and it should be right this time.