I am only occasionally in the town of Lockerbie now but had to attend a meeting in Lockerbie Manor Hotel this morning. As I passed through the town on my way there the Main Street was busy as usual in the bright winter sunshine.

Inevitably, the images of those dark December days eleven years ago flashed through my mind as they always do, and I think always will, whenever I go there. The main street alive with people and television cameras that first morning at 6am as we walked down to Sherwood; the deathly hush there in the eerie darkness as we were allowed through the police cordon and approached the crater; and the many journeys made though those same dark streets for many weeks in early morning and late at night to and from the incident control centre. Memories of tears wept at the image of the little girl on the plane in the red dress who ‘didn’t deserve this’ as she was described on a bouquet laid at the town hall in these early days and of standing with John Boyd in front of the town hall, again in the dark evening, head bowed as the first coffins left Lockerbie to go home.

It was all so different this morning and so it should be.

On my way home I decided to stop at Dryfesdale Cemetery. It was a spur of the moment decision but I think it had been subconsciously made earlier in the morning on my way out. The cemetery was very tidy as usual and there were few people about. The wood to the west has been harvested and, looking southwest, the rolling land of lower Annandale and beyond to Nithsdale spreads out in a wonderful panorama. The late morning sunshine was bathing the garden of remembrance in that beautiful light that only winter sun can create. And I was alone there for the first time I could remember in recent years. I walked slowly round reading all the inscriptions and absorbing the peace, which was tangible in the garden, still so beautifully looked after. The granite slabs, which hold the 270 names, somehow did not look so bleak today and as I scanned those names, surprisingly so many were still familiar, I remembered the privilege of laying a wreath during the tenth anniversary service last year and the conversations at that and other times with relatives and loved ones.

It is a beautiful place and I had the feeling that those who rest there and those who are commemorated there would be comforted by that beauty and that peace if they could but say.

As I was leaving the garden a young man approached the entrance dressed in the universal clothing of the young traveller with a light rucksack on his back. I wished him good morning as I passed and noticed his reply was muted. Then, I realised he was focussed on his approach to the garden. About twenty years old I guessed as I thought how much like those young Syracuse students he was. I imagined then that this was somewhere he had decided he had to come, or had been asked to come, and I was pleased that, like me, he would have time alone to absorb the beauty and the peace as he remembered.
 
 

When I came home my wife had prepared some lunch and remarked that it was such a fine day that she had washing out to dry on the line in the garden. I thought, ‘yes’. It is a beautiful day for washing too.

wna