Gill's Memorial

I’ve just returned from Castlewellan Forest Park where I made a new memorial cairn for Gill Banks. I walked up through the forest to the top of the hill behind the house. It’s called Slievenslat and the summit looks out towards Slieve Donard and Slieve Commedagh and over Dundrum Bay. I built the memorial cairn nearby from stones I found below the summit.

Gill died in a mountaineering accident in Snowdonia on 17th January 1987. We were engaged to be married and had just bought a house together. On the same day, in a separate accident, I dislocated my ankle badly and was taken to Bangor Hospital. I was told about Gills death as I was being treated in Casualty, she was in the Mortuary below.

Gill’s ashes were scattered at a ceremony on Crib y Ddysgl in Snowdonia that Spring. For many years I returned there on every anniversary of her death. Then work took me far away, yet wherever I lived I found a good place and made a memorial for her. In 1999 after I arrived in NI, I made a memorial cairn on Slieve Commedagh. But this year, because of my knee and breathing problems, I wasn’t able to go there so I chose a place for a new memorial cairn. On Slievenslat it took me about an hour to find the stones under the snow, carry them to the summit and build the cairn. Then I sat beside the new memorial and talked with Gill.

 

When I approached the new memorial site for the first time, two ravens flew overhead calling to each other. I then knew I was in the right place. The raven is my animal of power. A raven came to me when I returned to Snowdonia for the first time after Gill died. I had gone there for the inquest into her death (a horrible ordeal) and had just started to walk again supported by a stick. Some years later, I did my best to capture this experience in a poem.

 

Raven

 

My animal of power appeared
on the day I returned to the mountain
(the inquest was to open nearby).
At the pass I limped from my car
and shuffled with a stick
to the start of the stony ascent
and halted.

My damaged leg throbbed
as I traced the craggy ridge of Crib Goch;
serene, smiling to the lens,
you’d forged ahead on the climb.

I laid flowers on a boulder beside the path,
an insignificant blaze of yellow and red
amidst bleak millennia of glacial erosion
and mumbled,
words flown
the wind spearing my core.

Unable to keep on
and join you, afraid to return:
I slump to the broken ground
and remain.

Swooping down from the mountain
the great dark bird heads for me:
arrowing near,
glossy-black overhead,
gliding effortless beyond.
The raven’s throaty cry booms out from the pass.
I hear the call.