Saying goodbye

I've never been to the graveyard here in anything but rain. I can't actually imagine a blue sky here, on the high road between Dunoon and Sandbank, with the hills overlooking it and the Neolithic settlement hidden in the woodland beyond. Today I was saying goodbye to an old friend, a friend who in the good days was my best buddy, my walking friend, the friend who cut my hair when no-one in town would do it as I wanted, the friend with whom I escaped silent retreats to go walking - in silence, really - and in whose company I explored every pathway in the vicinity and several muddy non-paths too.

When the officiating priest in the church told us to sit and remember Jane, I thought of the crazy day when we decided to wash the heavy brocade curtains that hung in what was then the Lady Chapel of Holy Trinity, her husband being the Rector at the time. We trod them in the bath in the Rectory, giggling at the sheer filth that coloured the water, then tipped them out into a baby bath (I imagine she'd kept it for her grandchildren) and sledged it down the stairs and out to the garden, where we hung these huge, heavy acres of cloth on the line. From then until the day when they were disposed of altogether, they had this line across them, right across the middle, where the curtains were ... wider. Just that.

In latter years, we'd not seen much of each other, but today was for remembering the person she had been and the friend I'd had and depended on. And for the puzzling out of which of her grandchildren belonged to whom ...