Isa Duncans Story

Isa Duncans

My day started with seeing my husband off to work, showering, tidying up the house, washing some clothes, doing small tasks that a million housewife's all over Britain do.

But that day ended up for me and the rest of the world with confusion and a heart aching agony that has never nor will it ever go away.

13th March, I had made a note in my diary to remember a card for Joe, its our anniversary tomorrow, so I will go up to the shops on our local little bus to buy him a bottle of his tipple (malt whisky) to celebrate.

The television was on but the sound was turned down to a bare whisper while I prepared myself to catch the bus.

I stopped, my comb midair, because there was something in the severity of the celebrities voice that made me walk through from the kitchen, lift up the remote control and turn the sound up.

Dear God, surely I wasn't hearing right, children, shootings, school in Dunblane Village, Scotland. Not in my Scotland! I couldn't take in what was being said.

It can't be true, not innocent children. Shut of the television Isa, if you don't listen then perhaps it will all go away?

My bus made its way up the street while I was looking out the window, seeing people but not really seeing them.

I went into the card shop to find the two assistants listening to an old radio that was sitting on the counter. The older of the two was sitting on a stool with her head in her hands crying and calling out "Oh dear God, Oh dear God" over and over again.

I selected a card, reading through them looking at words that meant nothing.

Paying for the card the girl said to me had I heard about what had happened, I nodded but never spoke because my throat was closed, I was looking at her, still hearing the radio and the sombre voices telling me things I didn't want to hear.

Why has everything changed? Why are birds still singing? Why has this day been entered in the devils diary?

Home again quickly, because I didn't want to talk to anyone.

Kettle put on and tea made, I bring the cup with me, sit on the sofa and lift the remote control.

Everyone is crying, huddled round the school gates, waiting for news about little children aged five and six, who never in their short lives have done anything wrong.

Watching this is unbearable for me, so how on earth are the poor parents of these bairns ever going to cope? Somewhere, somehow, there must be sense made out of this horror.

Hard-bitten reporters are sobbing, forgetting about the journalistic questions of [Who? What? Where? Why? And When?] Even they are silenced by the enormity of the tragedy.

My quiet little world has been blown apart never to be the same again.

You go to sleep at night; you awaken next day never thinking that there is something about to happen that rocks your faith in the very foundations of right and wrong.

Watching the television all day long, crying in disbelief until my eyes as well as my heart are aching.

Joe comes home from work later in the evening, says nothing, just puts his arm around me, men want to protect their young, these poor fathers have been robbed of the right to do that for their little ones.

There is an old lady being interviewed, she stands shaking her head in disbelief that her son could have done anything so vile as to go on a mission of evil.

We will never know, nor probably will his poor unfortunate mother ever know just what went through that mans mind to take on the devils handiwork.

The following days and weeks went by, everyone I spoke to dealing with what happened in their own way, I myself, hugged my grandchildren just a little bit tighter than normal.

A song was released just before Christmas that terrible year, with Dob Dylan's consent, new words were written by a Dunblane musician. The children, including brothers and sisters of the victims from the village sang "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" it reached number one, and all the proceeds went to charities for children.

My recollections that day are purely mine, everyone else will remember it in a different way, but what united us all was the pain and suffering that the whole of Dunblane entered into, never ever to totally recover.