November 1974

Dearest lambsie, I’m rushing through the years, through my list of things to say, but I don’t know whether I will finish. Time seems thin and wearisome and I have this feeling.

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie

Glad did I live and gladly die

And I laid me down with a will …

To think, I’ve been reading Mr Stevenson’s words all my life, and suddenly I understand them.

They used to call the reid-heidit ones fey. Knows more than she ought to, that one—aye, and they didn’t mean it kindly. But it can happen over a long life that you lose your fear of things you just know—you even start to trust that knowing. So I canna ignore this feeling that my time is running low.

There are still some things I’ve not written down, and if I don’t do it soon then they probably never will be told. But there is a reason they are last on a list. How heavy it feels, knowing I must dig up the stones I have buried and look at them again, gather them into the order of things. And then I must roll them on to you.

I am sorry, my Laura-lamb.