My father lingers for the next three days – there with us and yet not there.

And we wait.

Wait and hope.

Mother Eavan and I mix all the herbs we can, trying to bring him back but though his body is still here it feels like his soul has already left us.

Eavan had started her training as a Bandrui, a druid, at 10 so now at thirty she is fully-qualified and has all the old knowledge, all the old skills. Fourteen-years into my training, I'm also well-skilled. But nothing we try will bring him back to us. We pray to our Christian god and try to feed him the broths and potions we've been making but it is all to no avail.

On the first day the whole family, the clan and his Warband keep vigil by the third it is just me and occasionally Annis left to tend him, to be with him. While I tend him, living in the bubble of his half-life, around me preparations are being made, messages rushed across the sea but they are no concern of mine, he is my only concern now, staying with him and easing him into the next life.

The king of Oengusa, the second most powerful man in Dal Riada, the feared and fearsome Aengus Ilea is dying.

There would be no miracle, no interference from the gods or goddess, I know that in my heart, but it doesn't stop me praying and trying. Around me though, life had to move on. We are in a precarious position and we need a king, a smooth succession.

A burial service must be prepared and a new king chosen, life must go on and the world would move forward.

But this is all none of my concern as I sit by the bed of the large man who had carried me on his back what seemed like a few short summers ago. My life is here and I didn't want it to move forward. I wanted to live in the past, I wanted my Da back.

So I sit with him, talk to him, remember the stories. I hold his hand, try to make him drink, I pray to the new god, and invoke the old.

Only this room exists, old, drafty, made of ancient stones placed here before my people arrived on this Isle generations ago.

Only this man exists, old, tired.

Until he doesn't until he slips quietly from this realm to join the ancestors, to join my mother.

I sense it happening and send Annis, playing outside the chamber with her lambs and waiting, for the rest of the family.

They don't make it in time.

All alone I watch his life ebb and leave.

I've never felt more alone in my life.

Just weeks ago, just days, all I'd thought about was going back to Iona, going back to my work and back to Brother Tam, my brother Tam. But he isn't really mine, I know that now and that world seems a long way from where I was now. A long way from who I am now.

As I sit there alone, I wonder what will happen.

I wondered if the world will ever be the same again and in my heart, I know it won't.

I clean my father's face in complete silence, hold his hand and wait.

Wait for the world to come in.

Wait for the change.

Wait for my family.

The silence is shattered by my eldest sister, newly arrived from Iona – wailing – the family all arriving one after one saying goodbye and beginning the process of mourning.

The room is crowded. The eight of us all in one place at the once for the first time in what seems like a lifetime. Orphans now, gathering together and standing as one. But still, I feel alone, even with Dom's arm around me. I have lost my Da, my best friend, my champion, my hero and the illusion of certainty has gone out of my future.

My sisters and I bathed him in the ceremonial ways of old, preparing him for his journey while my brothers stand vigil. That night, for the first time in three days, I go home, to sleep in my own bed. But sleep refuses to come. I feel too numb, too lost. And suddenly after twenty-four summers, this is no longer my home – not without the king, not without my father.

But here I am.

And life has to go on.

I am the family bard, the clan and the kindred's keeper of the stories and that is my sole purpose now, over the next few days. To remember and retell the stories of my father's life, I have a responsibility to keep him alive in the memories of the living and bring him alive for those to come. This is a sacred and important responsibility that I take seriously, one I needed to prepare for. I would pay my father the respect he is due, honour the warrior, the king that he was.

This is the last thing I could do for him.

My task and mine alone.

So I throw myself headlong into this task, keeping mostly to my own company. Only Eithne, my mentor and friend comes to help and guide me in my tasks.

Outside around us, the body that had been my father's is being prepared, longboats are coming in from across the kingdom, warbands and representatives from every Kindred and all the hierarchy of our own are descending on our Island home. Meetings are being held – meetings I should attend to record for history but no-one bothers me, no one interrupts me and so I prepare and mourn alone – always alone with only the ailing Eithne, her hearing now joining her eyesight – failing her and making the one thing she has always done so well – communicating – almost impossible. But she is here and that is enough, even though in my heart I long for another bard, another storyteller to share my ideas with and to help me through the next few days. A face inhabited by eyes the colour of the sea in the brightest day, a voice deep but kind, come unbidden to me and I push them away. I have no time for such thoughts, they do me no good. I am a priestess of the old ways and a sister of the new and I will need to be both to get through the next through days - through the ordeal to come.

Then, at last, the day I dreaded dawned, clear and bright and warm – the sort of day we have been praying for in recent weeks and yet on this day, a day when there is to be no farming and no tilling of the earth, no planting and no tending to our livestock, on this day the weather is finally the picture of a perfect spring day.

And it means nothing; only that we would have clear skies and calm seas to bury my father.

And so it came to pass.

A mist drifted in gently from the sea as the high king stood in his full royal regalia, regal and still handsome despite his advancing age, cloak fastened with his ceremonial brooches, carrying his sword – a sword swung in battle many times with my father at his side. He looks every inch the great king, wide shoulders a long greying beard, short cut hair, a man stocky and proud. He's come across the sea to farewell his friend to lead the mourners down from my father's keep, through the Island's main village and to the sea.

Behind him dressed like the prince's they are, my brother's and brother's in-law – members of our war band, carry my father high with pride.

Aengus Ilea, dressed in his finest royal purple robes, swathed in his best cloak, held aloft on the shoulders of his kin, the men who would carry on in his name, carry forward his bloodline.

They move slowly, deliberately, carefully through a crowd of our Islanders, my father's loyal subjects, here to say goodbye to their king, a just king, a good man.

We his daughters follow behind the body, Annis carrying the urn that held our mother while my youngest brother Ailean carries my father's sword beside her and around them my father's grand children held the other possessions to be buried with him along with offerings for the ceremony.

Bodhrans beat the time as the sombre procession moves towards the ocean, slowly and deliberately heading to the bay.

Ahead of us was the breath-taking sight of hundreds of vessels bobbing on the gentle seas ready to guide my father on his journey to Iona and to the burial ground of the kings.

With great ceremony, the old King climbs to stand proudly in the bow of the largest vessel – multi-oared and elaborately decorated while my brothers carry my father on-board ready to travel to his final destination.

My sisters stay with the family and the clan on the shore but Eavan and I, take pride of place beside our brothers, heading towards a final goodbye, a goodbye we never wanted to say.

I sit staring out at the sea watching the waves fly past as we make quick work across the waves, trying not to feel ill. I hadn't eaten that morning, couldn't remember when I last had. Food has been the last thing on my mind over the past week and still isn't high on my agenda even now.

I suddenly feel light-headed and queasy so I close my eyes and breathe in the salt air, remembering the last time I made this crossing, coming home from Ioana with my father. We are travelling back now but not the way I'd thought. I try not to think about my loss and just breathed in and out to the stroke of the oars.

Next to the king a lone harper stands singing a lament, I surrender to the music and tried to quell my nerves as we glide across the ocean – repeating the stories I would tell over and over in my head.

And then we cross the bay and in the afternoon sun, we see the beach crowded with people, waiting for us, waiting for our king, their king and I realise I'm not the only one who is going to miss him.

The boat comes in and we are met by Eiric – who offers his father a hand but the proud old king refuses and steps proudly unaided out and then we are all disembarking, heading through a guard of people, peasants and warriors, men and women rubbing shoulders as we carry our king up the hill to his resting place.

Priests and Monks line the last part of the route and I look for Tam and don't find him in the big sea of faces but then I think I'm too numb to register anything really. My brothers move my father's body to the large grassed hill prepared for his burial and my sister and oldest brother move forward to stand with the druids and Pagan priests who will perform the rites and rituals. And there in the centre of the group is Tam. I'm shocked to see him there – he's a Christian Monk and yet here he is the middle of the group performing a decidedly non-Christian service.

My father had not converted, Christianity was my mother's faith a fact my dad jokingly blamed himself for. Worried for my pregnant mother and his youngest son at the end of the last big sickness 13 years ago, he'd sent them, along with Eavan, to my mother's aunt the mother in an abbey at the western tip of Dal Riada. Mother and Eavan had returned with Ailean, the newborn Annis and a new religion. But my father remained still a man of the land, of the druid or the ancient beliefs and here in the shadows of the standing stones, we honour that, honour him.

And there in the bright afternoon sun, my sister, two other priests and Tam – all dressed in the white robes and golden sickles of the druids - repeat the ancient rituals and send my father back to the earth, to the ancestors.

I stand away from the main group, holding the urn containing my mother in one hand while my younger brother clutches my other hand in his. We stand back until we were called to add the grave offerings. And then we step forward hand in hand, the waning sun doing it's best to defrost our frozen hearts and send my father on to his next journey.

Conal and Dom cover my father with earth as I come forward and sing the lament before Eavan, flanked by Tam and one of the other priests, steps forward to offer the final blessing as the sun started to sink slowly into the ocean. And then, as the sun disappears completely, we all begin to sing. The predominantly male mourners make the hills ring, sounding for all the world like a deep-voice heavenly choir and suddenly the formal part of the ceremony is over and I know with sudden clarity he is gone – he is really gone.

I have little time to really dwell on this though.

The king is now lighting the fire beside my father's tomb and the rest of us are lighting our torches from this sacred fire.

As day turns to night we leave my father and mother on the hill of the kings, the High king leading the way - torch held high, with Eiric at one shoulder and Conal at the other and behind them, we trail in a long slow caterpillar of grief back to the main keep of my brother-in-law.

The nerves are building in my body the closer we come to the keep, the responsibility of telling the stories of my father's life weighing heavily on my heart but then, as we near the main building, I feel a strong hand on my shoulder and a deep voice whispers in my ear.

"I know you will do your father proud."

I turn just in time to see Tam give me a gentle reassuring smile and while it doesn't ease my grief or take away my pain, for the first time in days I don't feel quite so alone.