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It's been ages...

... 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.
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calabaza said…
u almost made me cry... its no difficult today, kinda rain...
May 07, 2010 3:03 pm
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