Ada's Last Journey.

Yesterday I went for a walk with my Dad and my wife onto Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire. My Dad is 75 years old and not too good on his feet these days so he was struggling and had to keep stopping for breaks.

We pushed on through the ferns and heather, climbing a secluded gully with a stream running down it in the midday sun. I walked closely behind Dad so I could grab him if he fell but didn't make it too obvious as he is still a proud man, he served in the Royal Navy and the police until back injury forced him out.

Ordinarily he wouldn't be walking terrain like this but we were on a mission of duty. I was carrying a rucksack on my back.

It wasn't very heavy as all it contained was the ashes of my grandmother Ada Porch.

She died on April 22nd last year, eight months shy of her 100th birthday and my dad felt it was time to make the pilgrimage and scatter her remains on the moors above the small town of Burley-in-Wharfedale where she was born and raised.

We finally stopped halfway up the gully next to a water fall. This was the same spot where my dad had scattered the ashes of my mother 16 years ago. My grandma's husband had been killed in North Africa during World War 2 and my mother was her only child, she had never remarried.
She moved in with my parents before I was born and lived with us for many years, to me and my brothers it was like having three parents so we were close to her.

We stood by the waterfall as my dad took the ashes from the rucksack.

"Here we are Ada", he said, "back with your daughter again after all these years".

"You were always telling us you were a nuisance and in the way but we were glad you were always there for us", I said as my dad cast the ashes into the waterfall and we watched them swirl in the pool below and settle on the surrounding rocks.

When I was a kid my grandma would buy me a Pink Panther chocolate bar every Saturday when she came back from town. She walked me to infant school every day when I was young.

She baked the best Butterfly buns in the world.

She smoked Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes and liked to put whisky in her tea. She was always there for us and we all loved her.

Ada Porch, December 5th 1910 - April 22nd 2010.

Night night Grandma.