FEBRUARY 2012 Colin died suddenly when Evie was 22 months old and Isla only nine weeks. My girls only know their daddy through photos and what friends and family tell them about him. However, he is very much part of their lives through ongoing conversations and they want to have somewhere to go where they can sit and chat about the daddy they never knew in person but who they love to hear all about. They know that daddy's kind colleagues in London have given them a bench in a beautiful London park but we don't get to go there very often. Walking along the pretty coast of Cramond in Edinburgh last week, they asked if they could have a bench for daddy that they could sit on. We had been having a chat about climbing Ben A'an for a charity of their choice because Colin's ashes were scattered at the top of Ben A'an a few months after he died, when the girls were too little to come. I have been waiting for them to be big enough and strong enough to climb 'daddy's special hill' and now that they are five and six I think with a bit of training they can. I had been suggesting they could both choose a charity to raise money from the climb to give them an incentive to climb to the top. But as we walked along Cramond Evie came up with the idea that she would like to raise enough money for a bench for daddy and I can't fault her thinking. What a great idea - they will have a place to go whenever they want to think or talk about the wonderful man who would have been an amazing father.
Talking about this whole project with my widowed friend Lorna Caldwell and she had been thinking the same for her children so now a merry band of two widows and their children will be dragging themselves up Ben A'an at the end of May in the hope that we can raise enough money for our children to have lovely wee seats to think and chat about their dads. Lorna has her own fundraising page and I will post the link to that too.