It’s twenty two, long years since the great love of my life died, on Good Friday.

Such a bittersweet day of memories….
one of the saddest thoughts is the wish that he could see my garden, which today is flourishing with blossom on the Blackthorn, and on the Magnolias and the Amelanchiers, surrounded with wild primroses at their feet.
The blackthorn are like pearl necklaces around distant fields.

We were together for seven wild, wicked and wonderful years…..as a friend commented:
“Sure, that was a relationship made in the depths of heaven!”.

These photo’s were from when we were up in Jura…..a wild place that forged and tempered his wild and free spirit, and my favourite photo of Francie with Norman.  (I will write stories about Norman another time, a great teuchter!).

Now and then I dream of Francis, and for a day or two it’s as if we were together yesterday.

It can be sad to be the sole sanctuary for all the memories of our times together…..

Three months after Frank died, I was offered a sculpture residency by the Scottish Forestry, out of the blue.
I’d never carved anything taller than about 12 inches before…and I doubt that I’d have had the nerve, but for being demented with grief. Eight weeks, in a tiny caravan in the midst of midge infested forestry, with just my dog and a radio,  was the perfect sanctuary.
This was my carving for Francis, inscribed “Tha mi lan ionndrain na dheidh fhein”…..I am full of the loneliness after himself.
Whilst looking for the photo, a song came unbidden to mind. It’s a song I used to sing, many moons before I met Francis.
“It’s fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide,
In a dress of white linen and ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUoXAVJkvCo  A lovely version by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior.

Enough open heart soul surgery, for the day that’s in it!