

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. 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. When Gary spoke about what it was like to sit beside the woman he loved as she left her physical life, Alan looked over at me. We discovered mini cottages and tiny clotheslines gracing the grounds of an 18th-Century mansion, the Falls Hotel & Spa.Īlan perched the camera on a tripod in front of Gary. In Allison’s honour, we hiked in the driving rain and mud to visit a local fairy trail. Years later, after Allison met Gary, she devised an elaborate story about fairies for his two young daughters, and left letters and whimsical evidence to keep them enchanted, even after her death. She visited Irish fairy trails in forests dotted with miniature houses rumoured to be inhabited by spirits. 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.ĭuring her time in Ireland, Allison wrote about witchcraft and spells. It was a motion to heal, to remember her joyfully and to smile again, as Allison would have wished. The journey was for the mourners just as much as it was for Allison. As we landed at Dublin Airport, Alan handed me his digital camera. Just as Allison had leveraged the camera to make art out of her suffering, so would we.
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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. 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. 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 gift.Īfter her death, two of Allison’s friends unexpectedly found footage she shot of herself talking into the camera. As a funeral singer for more than two decades, I’ve learned not to hesitate when a grieving person requests your presence. 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.Īmong those who mattered most to Allison, I was merely a tangential part of her life. Pilgrims often leave photos and keepsakes of their sick or departed loved ones in the damp cavern.

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. 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. 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.
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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.Īllison released the documentary in 2014 and started a foundation to help others fighting 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.

Instead, both decided to scrap that and make a documentary about Allison’s fight against cancer. At the time, she and Alan were casting roles for a project they planned to start shooting soon. I told her I couldn’t wait to see her dream come true.Īllison’s first cancer diagnosis was in 2011 when she was just 38 years old.
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She hoped to continue her work there on a series of novels.

After the final episode of season one, the screen goes black and the message ‘In Memory of Allison Wilke’ appears.Īs we sat around the table four years ago, Allison told me she yearned to return to Doolin where she’d stayed for six weeks during a writing retreat 11 years ago. They’d collaborated for years, and at the time of her passing, she was working as a producer on the Netflix show The OA. On that bright Los Angeles afternoon in 2015, she visited my apartment to discuss a film project with Alan. Her name was Allison Wilke, but she often chose to go by Allison W Gryphon, inspired by the mythological creature which symbolises courage and strength.
