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Finding graves
We knew from Mrs McBain that Jimmy, Greta and Sandy were buried at Stoer, but Nan told Scott on the telephone that Ally Alistair was in fact interred in Lochinver churchyard, which we’d already been past several times coming and going from Mrs McBain’s B&B. Back we went, then, and under a bright September sky poked about through the gravestones.
We saw MacLeod after MacLeod, but eventually Scott emitted his third exclamation of triumph, when he found a stone saying the following:
Erected by the family
In loving memory of
our father
Alexander MacLeod
Badnaban
died 14th Aug. 1940
Also our mother
Mary White
died 23rd Nov. 1940
Also our sister
Annie MacLeod
died 22nd July 1971
We learned later from Nan MacLeod that it was probably Jimmie who had put this up.
We left Lochinver, driving gingerly past the spot where Sandy had his fatal crash, and on to Stoer. It is several miles away up the coast, in a gorgeous bay of vivid emerald grass, nestling amidst enormous cliffs. There are three graveyards, starting with the original one at the top of the hill, then the ‘old’ one and below that the ‘new’ one. We told a very old lady who was walking down the road with her mother what we were doing, and they said ‘the Lochinver people are buried in the old cemetery, on the left [ie, the east] side’.
Sure enough, there was Jimmy and Greta’s little grave, marked by a marble stone in the shape of a book, and next to it a larger black marble slab commemorating poor Sandy: he died in February 1976, and poor Jimmie died in July 1978. Greta outlived them both, dying in 1986, after which the croft in Badnaban was sold.
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