Encomium for Wahid
Christopher Ryan | Thursday, 10th October, 2024

Wahid – Ewen Macdonald
4 January 1947 – 1 October 2024

There are times when the magnitude of what we call life leaves one speechless.

It is enough that the coming of each day brings light, and opens every facet of this world to our eyes.

And then, the mystery of night when all seems closed,  and the world is covered in darkness,  again we are in awe.

So too it is with a soul, born into this world of light appearing for its appointed length of days and then returning into that mystery from which it had its birth...

Wahid came into this world out of the mystery but for so many of us here, he carried that mystery with him sometimes as a burden and sometimes the light shone in him and now he has returned,but, mystery of mysteries the light that is Wahid remains in our memories certainly, and in his works, but I believe that for all of us gathered here he remains present with us now, as that strange of strange mysteries a scent, a resonance, an essence of that original perfection of soul that is Wahid One, a unique soul of THE soul one who carried that ONE sometimes as a burden, but more often as the years passed as that light, that light of the One, the Wahid.   Our memories, better or worse, are leavened by this light, and this light is evident in his works.   Like many of us, we first came across Wahid by way of this place.

Wahid was by trade a builder. In preparing Chisholme for the courses here, he was instrumental in the early restoration of this house, digging down and repairing the foundations where subsidence had occurred, renovating the old greenhouse, and much of the fabric of the delapidations to the walls of the garden itself.

Many of us will have known his skills in this in our own building projects. He laid the basement floor and repaired the roof of what is our family home in Hawick, and painted the exterior walls.

We know him also as a cook. I don't know how he came by this skill, suffice it to say that when we worked together in our first restaurant, in Cambridge, I realised quickly that he had le bon goût in spades, a finesse of good taste.

Among so many memories, the sweetest perhaps is of Sunday mornings sitting together in the courtyard of Strudels Restaurant as the fountain tinkled away in the background, working on menus and recipes for the coming week. He was the best cook we ever had. He regularly cooked here in the Chisholme kitchen. And his wild duck with cherry sauce was a masterwork.

As age took it's toll on his ability to repair roofs and restore stomachs, his fineness of taste carried through into his painting. He developed a completely unique style, mostly landscape – a kind of mystical landscape where for moments it seemed he was piercing the veils of the evident forms portrayed, and seeing beyond to a beauty that seeped through as light, eclipsing the pigments and fibres of this worldly canvas.

His death, as much as we can know of another's passing, was in the spirit of his life. Some pain, of course, it is inevitable in any birth, for such is the reality of passing from this world. He had been diagnosed with lung disease since some months, and then just a few weeks ago he was told he had cancer. He could no longer shop in his own, and took to his bed, eschewing invitations to be looked after in hospital. He let me know his time was coming and accepted this with that wry smile of his that spoke volumes.

A number of us here who form a little enclave in the area round Silver Street in Hawick looked in on him and took care of his needs in his final days. And somewhere in the early hours on 1 October, he surrendered his flesh and bones, quietly, without fuss, for that  wider landscape, and that canvas without borders.

Wahid was a student of this school, and first and foremost he carried and cared for this education in his heart.

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