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ADVENTURE & EXPERIENCE | IREL AND

A friend’s final wish in Ireland

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(Image credit: Mary Beth Gentle)

By Lauren DePino 30th April 2019

When a young filmmaker dies, 24 friends and family

members journey to the Emerald Isle to retrace her steps
and fulfil her dying wish.
watched tremulously as my fiancé, Alan, steadied himself and his camera

I on a craggy edge of the Cliffs of Moher, facing the wild Irish waters.
Through the torrent of rain and gusts, all I could think was ‘please don’t
fall in’. We had caravanned from the nearby village of Doolin alongside a
crew of friends for a rehearsal. The next day, in the same location, 24 of us
would bear witness as our friend Gary fulfilled his beloved’s final wish: to scatter her
ashes in the sea.

At the cliffs, the panorama astounded. When I looked one way, gilded light surged
from the sky. From the opposite direction, a looming shroud of grey unspooled. Soon
rain pelted our shoulders and sides, followed by a rainbow. Phillip, a local artist, tipped
up his chin. “The beauty of this weather is its changeability.”

“Just like grief,” I added. In my 37 years of life, I’ve been sideswiped by grief’s terror
and its majesty. But this Ireland trip was not about me.

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To fulfil Allison Wilke’s final wish of bringing her ashes to Ireland, 24 of her closest friends
Canada
and family travelled to the Cliffs of Moher (Credit: Mary Beth Gentle)

AS THE WORLD OPENS

Her name was Allison Wilke, but she oen chose to go by Allison W Gryphon, inspired The world's most agile
by the mythological creature which symbolises courage and strength. I’d only met countries
Allison once. On that bright Los Angeles aernoon in 2015, she visited my apartment
to discuss a film project with Alan. They’d collaborated for years, and at the time of her ADVENTURE & EXPERIENCE
passing, she was working as a producer on the Netflix show The OA. Aer the final
Why this city is escaping
episode of season one, the screen goes black and the message ‘In Memory of Allison
underwater
Wilke’ appears.

As we sat around the table four years ago, Allison told me she yearned to return to ADVENTURE & EXPERIENCE

Doolin where she’d stayed for six weeks during a writing retreat 11 years ago. She Iceland's unsung 'herring girls'
hoped to continue her work there on a series of novels. I told her I couldn’t wait to see
her dream come true.

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Allison’s first cancer diagnosis was in 2011 when she was just 38 years old. At the time,
she and Alan were casting roles for a project they planned to start shooting soon.
Instead, both decided to scrap that and make a documentary about Allison’s fight
against cancer. In the film, you see Allison in the operating room, moments before her
mastectomy; and again post breast-reconstruction surgery, as a tattoo artist etches
triumphant ink wings on her. You see her driving home from the doctor, windows rolled
down and smiling, on the day she finds out she’s beaten the first round of her disease.

Allison released the documentary in 2014 and started a foundation to help others
fighting cancer. But just two years later, from a hospital bed, she’d tell her partner,
family and closest friends she was dying, followed by, “Everything will be OK.” In her
final days, she requested they take her ashes to Doolin, where she envisioned herself
at peace.

Doug Wilke, Allison’s father, travelled from New York to Ireland to celebrate the life of his
daughter and to visit the Irish countryside she loved (Credit: Kaylin Frank)

Two years aer her death, here I was in Doolin, the place she longed to see again – but
without her. How cruel it seemed. I felt unworthy: undeserving to be present alongside
people like her partner Gary, with whom she’d exchanged hundreds of handwritten
love notes; her father Doug, who had known her as a sunny-haired child; or her friend
Alia, who did Allison’s laundry when she found it too difficult to li her arms.

I wasn’t Alan, who’d combed through more than 100 hours of Allison’s documentary
footage when she was still alive, because she couldn’t bear to do it herself. At the time,
Allison had just completed her chemo treatments and her hair had grown back. She
was not ready to relive the most frightening parts of her battle.

If someone can think of something – anything – you can

do to help them reshape their life, it is a gift
Nor was I Phillip, who runs an art gallery in the nearby seaside town of Lahinch, who
joked to his wife on the day he met Allison 11 years ago that he’d invited a ‘California
blonde bombshell’ home as their dinner guest. Their friendship stuck. During Allison’s
cancer battle, Phillip placed a picture of her in good health at one of her favourite
spots: the mythic shrine of St Brigid’s Well in County Clare, whose water is believed to
have healing powers. Pilgrims oen leave photos and keepsakes of their sick or
departed loved ones in the damp cavern. Phillip had sent Allison a photo of herself
among the tapestry of totems – a reminder that Allison’s Ireland was with her,
beckoning her to mend.

Among those who mattered most to Allison, I was merely a tangential part of her life.
But Alan told me he needed me to come. As a funeral singer for more than two
decades, I’ve learned not to hesitate when a grieving person requests your presence.
Through the pain of reckoning with the loss carved in our hearts, if someone can think
of something – anything – you can do to help them reshape their life, it is a gi.

Gary Rizzo, Allison’s partner, takes a moment for himself at the Cliffs of Moher the day
before scattering Allison’s ashes in the same location (Credit: Kaylin Frank)

Aer her death, two of Allison’s friends unexpectedly found footage she shot of
herself talking into the camera. Some of the footage was fragments of a video diary
from Allison’s time in Ireland years earlier, and some was from her cancer battle that
wasn’t used in her documentary. The plan was for 24 of Allison’s closest friends and
family to film each other whenever we felt inspired and to record interviews about
Allison for a new movie about grief. Just as Allison had leveraged the camera to make
art out of her suffering, so would we. As we landed at Dublin Airport, Alan handed me
his digital camera.

The journey was for the mourners just as much as it was for Allison. It was a motion to
heal, to remember her joyfully and to smile again, as Allison would have wished.
During our week-long trip, we gleaned clues from Allison’s old photos, footage and
stories to retrace her steps – from the Well to the Cliffs to the corner booth at Fitz’s
Pub & Eatery in Doolin, where she wrote her first manuscript.

During her time in Ireland, Allison wrote about witchcra and spells. She visited Irish
fairy trails in forests dotted with miniature houses rumoured to be inhabited by spirits.
Years later, aer Allison met Gary, she devised an elaborate story about fairies for his
two young daughters, and le letters and whimsical evidence to keep them enchanted,
even aer her death. In Allison’s honour, we hiked in the driving rain and mud to visit a
local fairy trail. We discovered mini cottages and tiny clotheslines gracing the grounds
of an 18th-Century mansion, the Falls Hotel & Spa.

Friends of Allison filmed an interview with the author’s fiancé, Alan, for a documentary
about Allison and grief (Credit: Lauren DePino)

At our group dinners at Fitz’s, I listened to other people’s stories about Allison. Her
aunt Agnes’ sky-blue eyes teared up as she told me that Allison put others first, even
while ill. Her 86-year-old father spoke with his Long Island accent about their summers
sailing together. With each memory shared by those who loved her, I became a witness,
a keeper, of parts of Allison’s life, and I vowed not to forget them.

In the Cambridge Dictionary, a definition of the verb ‘witness’ is a command: ‘Be the
person who sees’. Here I was, living, breathing evidence that someone I barely knew
had loved well.

Here I was, living, breathing evidence that someone I

barely knew had loved well
By the time Gary asked me to join him in the private bar at Hotel Doolin, where he
would film his interview about Allison, my feeling of unworthiness had faded. He had
summoned me as his witness. I’d felt a similar pang of honour when a father had asked
me to sing Danny Boy at his young son’s funeral, entrusting me with his grief; and
when a teacher in high school requested I rehearse a hymn with her – a song I would
sing at her funeral months later.

I asked Gary why he wanted me there when he could have chosen someone who knew
him and Allison better. He told me I understood the grieving process and the magic
Allison brought – and still brings – to him. Earlier that week, Gary had confided that he
believed Allison had visited him through signs, some as bewitching as when he’d
stumble upon a fairy door. Perhaps he detected that, like Allison, I was open to magic
and would believe him.

Alan craed a box for grievers to place their prayers, wishes and intentions to leave behind
at St Brigid’s Well, along with a photo of a smiling Allison (Credit: Gary Rizzo)

Alan perched the camera on a tripod in front of Gary. I sat on a bench off to the side.
When Gary spoke about what it was like to sit beside the woman he loved as she le
her physical life, Alan looked over at me. He knew my biggest fear was to lose him. And
yet, I felt something tell me this wasn’t the end for Allison, that there’s no end for any
of us, as long as there are witnesses.

On the final night, while I ate fried cod and brown bread at Fitz’s, Allison’s closest
friend, Mary Beth, asked me to be her ‘eyeline’ during her interview. I’ve worked in film
and television and I’ve stood on the receiving end of another’s gaze. But not like this.
Not to someone grieving. But Mary Beth reassured me. She said it felt natural to her
for me, a warm force, to be her point of focus while she faced her grief.

When the camera rolled, Mary Beth told me that when things felt unbearable, when
life was ‘bats’, as Allison had called it, she encouraged her to turn a negative situation
into butterflies. And then one day, to Mary Beth’s surprise, Allison said to her: “You did
it. You’re becoming a butterfly”.

Aer Allison’s friends and family read their tributes at a small ceremony at St Brigid’s Well,
the heavy rain stopped and a double rainbow appeared (Credit: Lauren DePino)

The 24 of us drew close as Gary scattered Allison’s ashes off the Cliffs of Moher. We
put our arms around each other, many of us strangers until this trip. That cavernous
void we call grief can be dark, and can be heavy enough to crush us. But when there
are witnesses – people who see us – it can feel light and lucent instead. When I
watched Gary kneel on a promontory and joggle the urn towards the sea, I knew the
shape of him would change to accommodate the loss of her. I could already detect his
morphing, his butterflying.

That morning we said goodbye – the morning we brought Allison home – the cliffs, the
sea, the day were all our witnesses. I had become a griever by then, one of them. Now
that you’ve heard Allison’s story, you are, too.

Our tears fell like rain, but the Irish sky, ever-changing and miraculous, was a clear
cascade of sun. And we were all there to see it.

Friends and family gathered for a group photo at St Brigid’s Well, the shrine Allison visited
for solace during her writing retreat in Ireland (Credit: Phillip Morrison)

This article was published with permission from Gary Rizzo.

Travel Journeys is a BBC Travel series exploring travellers’ inner journeys of

transformation and growth as they experience the world.

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GEOLOGICAL MARVELS | NATUR AL WONDERS | CANADA | NORTH AMERICA

An icy mystery deep in Arctic Canada

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(Image credit: Stocktrek Images/Getty Images)

By Phoebe Smith 4th April 2022

Known as the "Crystal Eye" to the Inuit, Pingualuit Crater

was once the destination for diamond-seeking
prospectors. But the real treasure is the stories its deep
waters can tell.
he plane banked to the right, hard. As we took a first sweep at the runway

T – or, rather, the short stretch of bumpy land in the Arctic tundra that
would serve as one – an alarm sounded, the lights above the emergency
exits flashed red and the sound of the aircra's engines roaring back into
action filled the main cabin. My stomach lurched.

It was an exhilarating introduction to the far north of Quebec, in a region known as

Nunavik. Comprising the top third of Canadian province (larger than the US state of
California and twice the size of Great Britain) fringed by frayed edges of a peninsula
known as Ungava, most people don't even know it exists. But that wasn't always the
case.

Back in 1950, this area was splashed across newspapers globally and pegged as the
eighth wonder of the world. Not because of the wilderness, and not due to any
manmade structure, but because of the distinct land feature I was now flying over
enroute to take another shot at the runway: Pingualuit Crater.

"The name is Inuktitut for the skin blemishes or pimples caused by the very cold
weather," explained Isabelle Dubois, project coordinator for Nunavik Tourism, who had
previously only visited the crater in winter when the landscape was covered with snow.

I looked out of the window to distract myself from our second landing attempt and
Continue
thought how apt a moniker it was. The reading
tundra here is pockmarked by cles, fissures
and depressions filled with tiny pockets of water. Yet amid the myriad indentations, the
eponymous crater stood out significantly

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