Coming to terms with the death of a close friend

When my friend Gordon McNeill-Wilkie passed on, I had a sense of unreality. How could this great man have left us so soon? He was 50 years old. He was my Reiki master and teacher. We'd worked together very closely as dry-stane dykers, I'd assisted him on courses he gave in advanced healing techniques and psychic self-defence, and now he was gone.

Both Gordon's partner and his ex-wife had asked if I had any footage of Gordon, and I remembered that Genie had shot some footage of the two of us back in the winter of 2007 while we were demolishing and rebuilding a retaining wall out at Enochdhu.

Editing Genie's 50 minutes of footage, taken as a means for her to learn the workings of the video camera, was rather arduous. Not that the footage was bad, but rather the experience of seeing it again was not an easy thing for me. When you are editing a movie like this you watch certain scenes over and over again, and it was a couple of days before I started to feel good about what I was doing.

In the end it was a healing process for me, and I am happy with the result. This is how I want to remember my friend, and I know that many of those who knew Gordon feel the same way.