#writephoto. Derelict

Breathless, as much due to excitement as the very steep narrow path I had just climbed, I rounded the bend not knowing what I expected to find. It was still there, though. I could vividly remember the day that the old thatched roof was removed and replaced with red tiles. A bit of the community died with it’s removal. Now I saw that even the shiny tiles had not survived the intervening years. A sorry sight but one that still gave me joy. Memories came flooding back as I surveyed what were now the ruins of the old Chapel. Twice a day on Sundays, my father, mother, and my four brothers and sisters had walked the steep path up from the village to join with the other families in worship and the acapella singing of praises to the Lord. The congregation consisted of a stern-looking preacher in black  and only another three families, who lived in the adjoining farms in the steep, dark, rain-soaked mountains nearby. All of these were now long departed and the small family farms merged into one large corporate sheep-rearing unit with a farm-manager and two permanent staff living in the large modern farmhouse. So many ceremonies had taken place in that chapel but all the couples who had been married, the children who were baptised and christened, were now spread far and wide, possibly, in fact probably, dead. I myself had left many years before, settling down to married life with an out-of-towner as she was, by my parents, not so jokingly referred to. Now she too had gone and upon her passing I had decided it was a good time to make this pilgrimage to the land of my upbringing one more time. But this time I was not alone, my constant companion a shadow that clouded my every waking thought. “That damned pipe will be the death of you, ” she used to say and so it has proved. Upon hearing the news from my friendly but sympathetic doctor I knew that there was only one thing I needed to do. And here I am, preparing to lay down to sleep in the welcoming arms of my mother church, in the hope that I shall once more see friends and family past.