Hi all, welcome to Week 48! Alison shares about a recent trip to Scotland where she uncovered some of her late mother's history. I am so encouraged by how Alison saw God in the final years of her mother's life as well as by how she felt a reassurance of God's love when reflecting on the trip. I am sure you will be too!
In Alison's words...
On a recent touring holiday in Scotland, we headed to Perth where my late mother (1927–2022), Isobel, was born, and ended up in Glasgow where she studied music during the late 1940s. She had not been able to return to Scotland for many years as she began to suffer from severe mental illness leading to Alzheimer's. Some of this was gradually overcome and she could enjoy life once again, surrounded by wonderful staff at her care home, and plentiful family visits and outings. Those final years felt truly God-given, full of love, fun and music.
In Perth, on the banks of the River Tay, we went to the Sunday service at Kinnoull Parish Church, where my mother and her parents worshipped, as her father was the organist there from 1928 to 1950 and where she first learnt to play too. (It also has a set of stain-glass windows illustrating Jesus' parables by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, some of which are set on nearby Kinnoull Hill.) Afterwards over coffee I happened to sit next to a very elderly lady who remembered singing in the choir led by my grandfather, which was completely unexpected! And later, sitting in a cafe in front of Perth Museum (home of the 'Stone of Destiny'/'Stone of Scone'), I retrieved on my phone my mother’s written account of her early life, and came upon a description of Perthshire Musical Competition Festival which took place in the very building opposite, in those days the City Hall, where she took part in the competition classes for piano, solo singing and was photographed with one of her school choirs for the local paper. My mother's history was "coming to life" off the page!
Of her time in Glasgow as a student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music during those war-scarred years she recounted some lonely times lodging in a grim city centre tenement, and how she went to a popular church near the University on a Sunday evening to hear the acclaimed weekly sermon. So we located Wellington Church, with its large Neo-classical facade, and got chatting with the gardener outside. He was happy to let us in to see the interior my mother described: I could imagine her as a young student sitting in the packed congregation somewhere in the large semicircle of tiered polished seating, a young woman with her life ahead of her, as yet unknown. How she would have been amused to learn that her penned recollections, written after she was widowed, had inspired us to actually visit these places from her distant past.
The holiday allowed me to feel a new connection with my mother's young Scottish self and gave me such reassurance of how love transcends death, amid the challenges we continue to face. Though we lose our loved ones in our finite earthly life, what we can learn through shared times of suffering can be transformed with God's help into a deep love that can help us live better and bring healing in small ways to those around us. It is a taste of perfect love in a broken world.
Back in Perth, on an afternoon of bright sunshine and brilliant autumn colour, yet with a storm fast approaching, I scatter some of her ashes in the River Tay by the North Inch, a short distance from her childhood home. Feelings of loss are overcome with those of gratitude. Then, as the wind builds up strength, we head back into town, while enjoying the sight of an inexhaustible game of a black and white sheepdog in pursuit of a ball, returning to crouch with it further along the path, till its owners finally catch up and he flicks it onto the path for another round.
Alison Beek was formerly a designer for BRF Ministries, and lives in Oxford. In her 'retirement' she enjoys playing music, especially violin in various quartets, as well as singing in a choir and has taken up piano again. She attends St Luke's Church in south Oxford.
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Until next time,
Thank you Liz for your honesty and vulnerability in opening up this part of your journey. The first 74 years are the most difficult and the best is yet to come!