Candles against the gloom

Home again, after leaving a sunny Edinburgh at midday and arriving over a gurly Firth to torrential showers and the remains of a golden rose on the garden path, to say nothing of the draggled sweet peas ...

I hate leaving. Even though the house was empty - boys at school, son away to work, daughter-in-law at work already, even the cats nowhere to be seen after they'd been fed - it always feels like packing up a life. Maybe if we took less ... but You Never Know ...

Enough of this. The journey home into the deepening gloom (meteorological rather than psychological) was uneventful, especially as we gave up the chance of a scone in Greenock in Cafe Mor and headed for the ferry because of the closure of the A84 at Butterbridge after a landslide.For the uninitiated, this was not the usual trauma on the Rest and Be Thankful, but further down that road where there is no alternative route, meaning that all traffic had to be re-routed round a 64 mile detour or take the Western Ferries to get to the Central Belt. We didn't want to find a queue stretching down the road from the ferry terminal ... Happily, we didn't. Western had put on all four of their boats, and we drove straight onto one and were home when we expected to be. The rest is a muddle of croissants and jam in mid-afternoon, unpacking, heading out for something for dinner, unpacking some more, sorting out washing for a dryish moment, making bread for breakfast, eating dinner, collapsing ... and we're back on familiar territory.

My extra photo, which I had to add as a collage as I downloaded it yesterday, is of our dear friend Ruth, of whose death I learned last evening. Ruth and Ed turned up in our congregation one summer long ago when I was still working - maybe in the 90s? - and came home with us for coffee because I make really good coffee. We sat in our sunny garden and learned that their name was LaMonte, and that they came because we were Lamont country and they were staying in a clan cottage.   Fast forward some years and Ruth, by now an ordained priest in what was then known as ECUSA (Episcopal Church of the USA), became the very first woman to celebrate the Eucharist in Holy Trinity Dunoon. I recognise the background to her photo as the church as it was then, two refurbishments ago. 

Over the years we came to look forward to their visits. She and Ed were a formidably clever couple who wore their learning lightly, and we never ran out of conversation. They were coming to our house for dinner on the night of 9/11; they were in our house when we had family news that had us all toasting the moment; they came to an early birthday party in Edinburgh of Catriona who has just turned 18. And in the second spring of our retirement we stayed for two weeks with them in Alabama at the start of our American dream type tour of friends in various locations in the US. We met Brad, their son, from whom I learned of her death. 

I am so glad that just this year Ruth discovered the joys of social media, including FaceTime, on which I enjoyed some long conversations including one conducted in Holy Trinity churchyard on a glorious spring afternoon. Himself was in the church practising, and I was able to take her on a wee tour and let her revisit her times here. Her last comment on one of my photo posts was "I wish I could be in Argyll."

Blippers who read this - it's a very long post, but it's where I wanted to remember a special friend. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.