Full Site Feed
Gillian ...
We walk slowly through the graveyard behind the coffin.
My arms around Alex and Elizabeth, my eyes fixed on Karen walking ahead of us comforting the girls.
I try to focus on details, to move between the tragedy of what we are doing and the banal to avoid getting swept away in just how sad this day is. The names on the gravestones. The impressive bulk of the Victorian monuments giving way to the more modern stones surrounded by windmills and solar lights.
Then one simple, fresh, sandstone gravestone. The regimental cap badge. The word Iraq. The age - 18.
The words of the committal. The sound of the seagulls. The winter orange slash of colour cutting through the cloud.
Wife, mother, daughter, sister, best friend. In a part of the graveyard which many years ago before it was consecrated she kept her horses, close to her home and under a wide Sunderland sky we said goodbye and laid Gillian to rest.
