National Bereaved Parents Day 2023

Allyson and Will

My name is Allyson 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.

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.