Trip to Blackford Cemetry

Nine yoars ago this morning my dad died of a sudden heart attack. My husband and I had just loaded up the car and I was locking the front door when the phone rung. It was my mum to say that dad was in an ambulance on the way to PRI and he had suffered a heart attack and we were to go to the hospital and meet her there. I think I knew right away that he would die. When I arrived I wandered around and I saw the ambulancemen doing CPR on a patient in an open ambulance and I thought it was dad, but I just went back to the waiting room to wait on mum arriving in her neighbour's car. It was torturous waiting to hear. Then later the family were shepherded into a room and soon after the doctor and nurse arrived, with a box of tissues and gave us the awful news. It is still fresh in my memory as if it was last week. I remember what I said afterwards, how numb I was. My mum was sobbing and saying my dad's name and my daughter just devasted and almost hysterical with grief.

Dad was a gentle old man, blessed with endless patience and a giver of good advice. He would go to the ends of the earth for his family and just seemed if he would be around for ever. He called himself the A9 patrol as him and mum would either be driving to Perth to see my daughter and I or Dunblane to my brother and his family. I used to look at him, getting older in front of my eyes and would think of how awful I would feel when he died.

Another memory of that awful day 9 years ago was coming home from the hospital, sitting in his seat and seeing his shoes that he had taken off the night before, and I could picture him doing that. When I visited my mum I used to go up to their bedroom and bury my face in his dressing gown, just to smell him, as he would wear it when he got up in the morning and have breakfast, before getting dressed. After a time the smell faded, and that saddened me. But I have lots of lovely family memories and pictures to look back on, and there are many songs I hear sometimes on the radio that dad loved and they instantly remind me of him.

So this evening, mum and I put white roses at dad's graveside, which he shares with my papa, and we remembered a lovely man. The cemetry at Blackford is so pretty, sits on a hill overlooking the Ochils, with a wood at another side and a big view over to Ben Ledi at the other. The sun was shining so we sat on the seat that overlooked Blackford. Here is mum, with her memories, looking down to the house that she spent 67 years in.

This song, by Luther Vandross, is for everyone who no longer has their dad. Whenever I hear it, I cry . . . .. . . . .

Dance with My Father