Compassion Autumn Winter 2023

21 tcf.org.uk Hi, my name is Allyson Newman and I live in the Western Isles in an isolated village, without a phone. My beautiful son, Will, took his own life in February 2020. He was forty years old and had suffered with a rare and complicated form of epilepsy since his teens. He was my only child and I live alone. Two weeks after Will’s funeral the country went into lockdown. I was going through the motions of living from one moment to the next, trying to fill my time with anything that would give me a reason to get out of bed each day. I have a quarter acre garden and although I have always enjoyed gardening I have never had as much time as I would like to devote to it. My imminent retirement and lockdown provided the opportunity to immerse myself in a project where I could talk to Will about what I was doing and explain that every corner of my garden was a memorial to him and the happy times we had shared. For the past three years I have devoted almost every moment of my spare time, making concrete steps and pathways, growing my own plants and trees from cuttings, building raised beds from old pallets. I have stripped moss and grass from bedrock and created beautiful rockeries. I dug a pond outside my kitchen window and installed home made wind chimes on my home made bird table so that when the wind blows I can hear a sound that reminds me of Will playing his guitar. My garden, Will’s garden, is an ongoing work of love. It consumes me. Every tree I plant is in memory of my precious son, every flower seed that I sow is to enhance the scents and beauty of this very special place. It’s not a shrine. It is a living, growing memorial, created in the knowledge that Will would have loved every inch of it. The garden will be here long after I have gone and even though the pain of losing Will has not diminished, I am content in the knowledge that I will continue to create a place of tranquil beauty as a lasting memorial to my beautiful boy. A Memorial Garden by Allyson Newman COMPASSION | FEATURE - A MEMORIAL GARDEN