Lifted British

The fire crackled

in the hearth,

an extravagance

rarely

allowed for,

even

in the

bitter

cold

of winter.

Mary lay

exhausted

on the

soiled

birthing

sheets,

hearing naught but the

shallow

bleats

of her

early

born child.

As if there was

not

enough

sadness in her life,

the one

and only

tie she had

to her dead husband

would probably

not

live

past

the hour.

What had

she

done

in her

thirty three years

to deserve such a

cruel

life,

and to have

cruelty

heaped

upon

cruelty,

...even at the point

where the

joy of

holding a

child

in her arms

should

silence

all

memories

of

the

pain

of

birth?

Mary was not the first,

nor would she be the last to taste

the

bitterness

of an

unfair

life.

Just like

Biblical men of old,

who'd had enough

of the life

God

had

given them,

she cried out her anguish.

“God kill me now! Take me away – I cannot take another moment of this!”

Silence…

“God, remove me from this world! Take me to that place You call Paradise, where I cannot hear or see weeping, where joy is found in the stillness of my soul, where there is no more pain, no more sadness, no more bitterness!”

Silence…

Even the mewing from the child

had

stopped.

There was

a nothingness,

a stillness,

a coolness,

a greyness,

an unfeeling, emotionless silence.

She was

unaware of the

rise

and

fall

of her chest; unaware of the

beating

of her

heart,

unaware of the

view

before her

open eyes

as her mother presented

her

delicate

and tiny

newborn

son.

The boy was placed into Mary’s cold and weak arms and her mother sat beside her.

Without a tear in her eyes nor a softness in her manner nor a kindness in her voice, she shook her daughter. “We’ll have less of that moping around here! Thas got a bairn t’ feed and keep alive. Ger-up outa that there bed and give this child some of tha tit and then we’ll find a way t’ keep ‘im warm. After that we’ll fix up that bloody mess thas made int’ bed, get them there sheets off and ger-em clean”

Roused by the harsh kindness of a gruff truth as only the daughter of a British woman could, Mary pulled herself up and lifted her son high in the air. “Wilfred, you little sod, you pathetic and tiny little excuse for a baby, I will not let you go, I will not leave, I will not give up and neither will you – you’re a Yorkshire lad so you will fight and you will fail, you will love and you will hate, you will see the joy of life and you will see the lives of loved ones leave you…but not yet, because if God denies me death, then He will damn-well deny it you too!” Shaking with emotions of love, hate, grief and fear, she slowly dropped her arms and looked down at the lifeless, feeble child lying limp in her lap.

Mary held him to her breast and he did not turn to suckle. He did not cry. His eyes remained closed. With an anger that coursed through her very soul she shouted and demanded his cooperation – to no avail. Determined not to have this child die in her arms, she extracted the smallest golden bead of first milk by her own hand and dribbled it onto Wilfred’s unresponsive lips.

Slowly Wilfred’s soft pink tongue began to move the liquid around his mouth and then he swallowed and turned his head, nudging his face towards Mary’s breast for more.

“That’s the spirit, lad! Eat up while ye can” Mary’s mother broke the wonder of the moment “...Now I’ve got an old shoe box ‘ere that’s about the right size for t’child, and we can open t’oven door and pop ‘im in just ‘ere t’keep ‘im warm…”

Wilfred was placed in what could be called an early version of the incubator. A baby so tiny that he fit into a shoe box with room to spare, he lived and fed and grew. He grew into a man who fell in love with Alice, who gave him two children – Joyce and Donald. His beautiful daughter fell in love and married a man called Tony and they had three daughters.

The youngest writes.