On April 6, 2025, two days after what would have been my dear mum’s 79th birthday (she died on September 24, 2022, aged 76), I walked into the hills above Peebles with a dear family friend, Jane. The time was right to let my part of mum’s ashes go and the location and weather were perfect.
Mum lived near Peebles for more than 30 years after we moved to Scotland in the early 1980s. I was a teenager and while I wasn’t too pleased by the relocation from Hertfordshire to Scotland, I came to love my new home country and I have lived here ever since.
Mum and dad moved to Cheshire some 10 years ago but mum always talked so fondly of Peebles-shire and the hills. I was running a race in these hills when I learned that mum had died. Mum, Jane and I also walked together on Cademuir when I was around the age of 19 so we both have fond memories.
While mum had been diagnosed with cancer some six weeks previously, I did not know how quickly the disease would take her.
Merciful in the end, her death still came too quickly for me to fully comprehend. I can still hardly comprehend it and I miss my mum so very much.
As Jane and I walked, we chatted about mum and the hills and many other bits and pieces of life, past and present. We had tried a number of tines before to arrange for this walk but the weather had been unkind.
On April 6, we enjoyed a blue sky and warm sunshine – and it felt like exactly the right time to scatter her ashes. As we did so, Jane and I held hands, shed a few tears and Jane said some lovely words in Latin. Mum would have greatly appreciated this.
The words that I swim in my head as I think of mum flying free in her favourite hills are beautifully summed up by Scottish singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl:
The Joy Of Living (final verse)
Take me to some high place of heather, rock and ling,
Scatter my dust and ashes, feed me to the wind,
So that I may be part of all you see, the air you are breathing.
I’ll be part of the curlew’s cry and the soaring hawk,
The blue milkwort and the sundew hung with diamonds,
I’ll be riding the gentle wind that blows through your hair
Reminding you how we shared in the joy of living.