Friends, as appointed executor of my good friend Peter MacAulay’s estate, I feel it my duty to add a few notes to Peter’s very individual testament, as part of his legal last will.
Some of you may not yet know that, following examination of tissue samples, the cause of death of Doctor Peter MacAulay was listed as COPD. I was myself unfamiliar with the term. The abbreviations stand for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I understand that this is a term which covers various forms of blockage such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or both. It seems that heavy smoking and a dust-laden environment are both key factors which can lead to the development of this problem until it reaches an acute state.
We could consider it a mercy that Peter was spared further pain. However, it is also a great loss that a man who was hitting the stride of his intellectual development was taken from us. We have no alternative but to trust to a greater wisdom than we can presently perceive.
He would not have wished for too morbid a footnote to his life. However, I cannot avoid sharing the thought that the ironies involved in his death are very much in keeping with those of his life. He was a man who loved the sea and who indeed made his living for many years by helping to protect those in danger on or by the sea. He loved to cook and eat the produce of the sea. Perhaps, in this way, Peter revealed his truly spiritual side. Peter made it clear that he wished for no religious observances at this gathering or at his graveside. But he made no secret of his appreciation of the telling of stories in the gospels or of the pleasure he took in comparing the accounts of events given in them. Allow me to read a few words from the gospel of Mark.
And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed:
Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.
He answered and said unto them, give ye them to eat. And they said unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?
He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? Go and see. And when they knew, they say Five, and two fishes.
And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies in the green grass.
And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds and by fifties.
And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them: and the two fishes divided he among them all.
And they did all eat, and were filled.
I think Peter truly dedicated himself to an area of study he felt important, in his latter phase. This was a part of a major shift in his way of life. Latterly he spent very little time on or near the sea, apart from an occasional short walk to the harbour. His boat was very little used. There are no further extended pieces of writing in his diaries, either handwritten or on print-outs. I could find no further chapters stored in his computer. He seems to have found a focus at last and completed his research and the writing of his thesis in the comparatively short period of two years.
And yet, in a way, he drowned in his own house, in the dust which had encrusted all those folders and files. I was acutely aware of the smell of it, clinging to all his papers and books. As executor, I took all possible steps to contact the relevant parties. It proved impossible to reach Anna in the available time. I feel sure that Peter would have been glad she was able to complete her expedition. His friend Mairi attended with her family. His former wife was present, with her partner. A small number of former colleagues and members of Stornoway Sea-Angling Club, joined our gathering. His sister arranged for a large bunch of roses signed by both herself and her partner.
Some of Peter’s stated provisions, particularly those relating to the menu, were somewhat challenging. But all involved carried out their duties to the best of their ability according to the availability of fish. I did my humble best ‘on the pans’, with Davie’s assistance. You may have been confused by Peter’s use of the word runag for mackerel. My research informs me that this is a Gaelic term for ‘sweetheart’. This seems to be a transliteration of the Gaelic word rionnach (mackerel) but perhaps, for Peter, the two meanings are fairly close.
Peter was buried in Sandwick, by Stornoway, with no religious or civil ceremonials. A piper was however commissioned to play a selection of jigs and reels before the slow air of his choice. That is the piper’s choice. My recollection of my friend’s last verbal instructions, given to me before he underwent the operation for removal of the cancer, which had spread to a lung, was, ‘Don’t pin the piper down. He’s very welcome to call his own tune, even if we can pay him.’