... since a book made me cry, but the passage below brought tears to my eyes. McLean is writing about a grave he found in the cemetery in Ferryland, Newfoundland. The headstone showed that a couple, living in the late 1800s, had lost 6 young children in the space of 4 years.
Maybe when death is all around you, maybe when everyone's children are dying, maybe when the winter blows cold and the nights are dark and your ten-year old daughter gives a little cough and your heart seizes and you look at your husband with frightened eyes and then the priest comes and then she dies, maybe you find a way to make sense of things. But how, after five have gone, could you have a sixth? And how, when your last boy dies, could you plant a crop, go to church, milk a cow, eat a meal, smile, laugh, carry on?
From Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada, by Stuart McLean.
Maybe when death is all around you, maybe when everyone's children are dying, maybe when the winter blows cold and the nights are dark and your ten-year old daughter gives a little cough and your heart seizes and you look at your husband with frightened eyes and then the priest comes and then she dies, maybe you find a way to make sense of things. But how, after five have gone, could you have a sixth? And how, when your last boy dies, could you plant a crop, go to church, milk a cow, eat a meal, smile, laugh, carry on?
From Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada, by Stuart McLean.
Comments