Old Gravestone

There is a story to go with this pic, and off course I wish I had listened more when my dad told me it.

It is for a man they called Frank Rutherford but this may not have been his real name, he was found dying in a ditch probably from pneumonia and appeared to be living like a tramp. My step mums family took him in and he lived in their cow shed at the end of the garden for many years.

He taught the children of the family how to play musical instruments and I think dad said he might have been a teacher before he ended up in the North of Scotland. He was English, so had travelled a long way to escape whatever.

The homemade gravestone was made from concrete and sits at The Clachan in Bettyhill along the wall.

This story is about a kindness you don't see very often, a man of the road needed help and shelter, without which he would have surely died.

My step mum showed the same sort of gentleness and kindness in most everything she did, she rests in the same cemetery.

Large

xx