![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For the best
Nov. 21st, 2011 08:07 pmI’m back. My mother passed away last Wednesday, at the age of 77, after suffering a long and distressing illness. Thankfully the end came swiftly and peacefully and all her family were present.
It’s all been a slightly surreal experience to be perfectly honest, but then I suppose death is. When I flew up to Stornoway last Monday for the last watch, for some reason I had a scene from The Wrong War stuck in my head. It was the scene where the ratings ask Kennedy what they should do when they are ordered to retreat from the bridge. Archie replies “We fall back to the beach, and then, we wait”. Well we did wait, watch and watch, for three days and, typically, mother chose the moment we were all out of the room to breath her last. But then that was her way. She was fiercely independent to the last.
I watched The Wrong War a couple of nights ago and was surprised to discover I had remembered Archie’s line wrong. What he actually says is “Then, Styles, we withdraw to the beach and…..we hope for the best”. And I guess in the end it was for the best
We laid our mother to rest on Saturday in the teeth of a howling gale, right by the edge of the sea and she now lies within sight of the shore where she played as a child. We think she would have liked that.
View from Sandwick Cemetery
Many, many thanks to all for the kind thoughts and wishes. I can't tell you how much they have meant to me.
It’s all been a slightly surreal experience to be perfectly honest, but then I suppose death is. When I flew up to Stornoway last Monday for the last watch, for some reason I had a scene from The Wrong War stuck in my head. It was the scene where the ratings ask Kennedy what they should do when they are ordered to retreat from the bridge. Archie replies “We fall back to the beach, and then, we wait”. Well we did wait, watch and watch, for three days and, typically, mother chose the moment we were all out of the room to breath her last. But then that was her way. She was fiercely independent to the last.
I watched The Wrong War a couple of nights ago and was surprised to discover I had remembered Archie’s line wrong. What he actually says is “Then, Styles, we withdraw to the beach and…..we hope for the best”. And I guess in the end it was for the best
We laid our mother to rest on Saturday in the teeth of a howling gale, right by the edge of the sea and she now lies within sight of the shore where she played as a child. We think she would have liked that.
View from Sandwick Cemetery
Many, many thanks to all for the kind thoughts and wishes. I can't tell you how much they have meant to me.
