Dr Catriona M.M. Macdonald
Millport war memorial, commemorating the fallen of the two world wars
Did she cry? Was she consoled? How could she understand – a woman who had never seen an aeroplane – that a bomb dropped from the sky had killed her son? She was remembered as strict, solemn and serious by my mother and her siblings whose family home she shared in the 1930s. ‘Granny Campbell’ had certain expectations: Cuticura soap ordered specially from Glasgow, and a thick veneer of respectability which was hard for her Hebridean grandchildren to understand. She had dark moments too – the children learned to avoid her when she sat brooding, making circles with her thumbs in an anti-clockwise direction (who but children would notice such a habit?). But, what was she thinking?