Mellon Udrigle pt2

What follows is a short story from Rosemary’s past. After talking with her, I have taken our discussion and turned it into a series of small stories highlighting the incredible life that she has led. Direct quotes from our discussion are highlighted in quotation marks. All else is a retelling written by yours truly.

Whenever Rosemary and Bill went away they always tried to find a church to visit on the Sunday. It felt the right thing to do. A holiday didn’t mean a holiday from God. And besides, it meant a number of weird and wonderful experiences.

We’ve already read about Rosemary and Bill’s honeymoon and that strange Sunday service they attended. Well, on their trip to Scotland, that wonderous trip to the northwest coast, there was an equally strange, albeit slightly different experience.

The area they stayed in was at the time near a very strict church. The type of church that felt it inappropriate to hang your washing out on a Sunday. This was around forty years ago so who knows what’s happened since then.

Well on Sunday the whole family attended church. They had only arrived on the Saturday evening after a long drive up and the kids were naturally quite exhausted. Especially the younger ones. It didn’t help that during the service you stood up to pray and sat down to sing and the amount of praying and singing meant nothing short of a workout.

Well, one of Rosemary’s children was five at the time. When they were asked to stand to pray he got up wearily. He closed his eyes. And he promptly fell asleep.

“[He] actually fell asleep standing up. He fell against my knee and nearly knocked me over. So I did sit down actually. But he was asleep, poor little thing.”

Nothing like one of your children falling into you when you’re in the middle of prayers.

“And then you’d sing, no musical instruments, and you’d sing just the psalms. So it was very quaint. We were glad we were only there one Sunday. But it was all fun and part of the memories we had.”

It was one of the stranger services that Rosemary had been to. But it was an experience. And that’s what the holidays were all about for the family.

Stay tuned for more stories from the life of Rosemary. Please note: these stories will not necessarily hold any chronological grounding. They are designed as snippets of understanding into the life of Rosemary and while some will hold chronology, others may not.

Photo Credit: The photo in the logo was provided by Cassie Szelles on Unsplash. It is a photo of a beaches of Mellon Udrigle, Scotland. If you would like to see more of their work, click here.