TODAY, the shortest day, is the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over the Border’s town of Lockerbie.

This has particular and personal resonance for me as I grew up in Lockerbie and have family there. 

At the time of the disaster, my mum, Ella Ramsden, lived in the house I grew up in, in Park Place. 

It was that house that was hit by the mid-section of the plane as it plummeted from the sky. Over 50 bodies were recovered from our house and garden.

But our family were lucky. My mum was in the house at the time. By whatever gods were looking out for her that night, she ran with her dog, Cara, to the kitchen — the only room in the house left intact following the impact. 

Although when the noise abated, and it became unnaturally quiet, Mum looked up and saw the stars. 

My mum and Cara, who she had kept in her arms throughout, survived. They were pulled out of the window in her kitchen door that she broke with a frying pan. 

The next day the budgie was found fluttering about the ruins and the goldfish were still swimming in their rubble strewn tank. Everything that was alive in our house escaped. 

Eleven residents in another part of the town, where the fuel laden engines hit, were not so fortunate. Along with 259 passengers and crew on the plane, they perished.

I lived in Aberdeen at that time and, pregnant with my first child, had gone out with colleagues for a Christmas meal. 

When my partner came to tell me that a plane had crashed on Lockerbie, having finally spoken to my mum and knowing that my family were unhurt, my colleagues and I thought it was some kind of wind up. 

We laughed. But it quickly became clear it was no joke. With the Piper Alpha disaster in July, we soon realised that Scotland had suffered its second tragedy in a year.

It is a tribute to the resilience of the people of Lockerbie that when a canteen was set up the next day in the old primary school, to feed the army of soldiers, police and others who gathered to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, my mum was among many who volunteered. She made soup and washed dishes, keen to do her bit for the community.

Later, my aunt would be one of the Lockerbie women who set up a laundry to wash and repack the clothes and belongings of those who died on Pan Am 103, to return them to their families. Their loved ones would never come home, but those women ensured as best they could that they would at least have their possessions.

Other good things came out of such grief and loss. Friendships were made between the people of Lockerbie and the families of those who died. 

My mum became fast friends with a woman from the US, Gerry, who had lost her husband, son and pregnant daughter in the disaster. Her daughter and husband were found in what was left of my mum’s house — still sitting in their airline seats. Her son was never found.

It was an era of disasters back then and ITV made a programme called The Day I Nearly Died, interviewing survivors and others touched by these tragedies. 

My mum was interviewed and, when asked how she felt about so many dying in her house and garden, said: “I don’t like to think they died there. I like to think that’s where they came to rest.”

These words had comforted Gerry, and making her own cathartic journey to Lockerbie some years later, she had determined to meet my mum. 

They got on immediately and stayed friends until Gerry died. My mum visited Gerry in the US several times. This example has been repeated many times over and the links with the relatives have stayed strong. 

Lockerbie Academy still sends students to Syracuse University where many of those who died had studied.

Mum was never sure that the perpetrator of the bombing of Pan Am 103 had been found. Gerry had gone to the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the Hague and told my mum that she had looked into his eyes and didn’t believe he was to blame. 

When then Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi early following his diagnosis with terminal cancer, my mum was right behind that decision. 

Not just because she wasn’t sure he was guilty, but because, as she said to me at the time: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

As it happened my mum died from cancer before Megrahi but that doesn’t leave us bitter either. My mum was one of those people who always took the positives from things. She never felt a victim — quite the opposite — she saw herself as lucky. 

“I only lost belongings,” she would say. “A house can be replaced. Loved ones can’t.”

She went on to live her life to the full, feeling that having been spared, it was the least she could do. Of course she had survivor’s guilt but she spoke about it and she helped others with it. 

Everyone in Lockerbie knew and loved my mum.

So the 30th anniversary of Lockerbie is poignant for me and my family. The bombing of Pan Am 103 which took the lives of so many innocents was an evil act among many perpetrated before and since. 

However the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of such acts, people’s ability to find compassion amid such cruelty and to reach out to others, is uplifting and life-affirming. That’s how we remember my mum.