Chapter 5
THE month of March 1947 was on the whole warm and dry, and one Saturday afternoon it was so warm that it resembled summer weather. Just before leaving the sanatorium, I was speaking to three women patients when Kathleen joined us, and one of them remarked that if Kathleen got on her outdoor clothes she could walk part of the way home with me. Her eyes sparkled as she replied, “Wait for me, I won't be a minute”. When Kathleen ran off to the day-room to get her coat from the locker, the patient remarked, “I am glad I thought of that, she will be thrilled.”
Very soon Kathleen returned and I scarcely knew her. I had been used to seeing her dressed in a faded dress, white blouse, a loose-fitting embroidered cardigan with deers, and bare feet in blue bedroom slippers. Now she wore a beautiful brown overcoat, white ankle socks and brown shoes, while on her head she wore a tartan beret with a small coloured feather at one side typical of the headdress of Scotland. No beauty queen got more titivating and brushing than she did from the three patients before they let us off on our walk together.
I had to walk slowly and suit my steps to hers as the least exertion would tire her. When we had gone a certain distance along the winding pathway, Kathleen stopped and said that the patients were not allowed to go beyond that without permission, so we sat together in a sheltered spot and chatted.
She was full of hopes for the future. Some beautiful sunny day in the summer I was to ask the Matron’s permission to take her into town. She had never seen a town and was anxious to know what a town looked like. I was to introduce her to some people so that she could see what a kitchen looked like, how food was cooked and what family life was like. I was also to show her the house where I lived. Oh, there were lots of things we were to do that wonderful day in summer. But, alas when summer came she was lying in her bed of pain.
It was towards the middle of April she first got an inkling that she was going to die. Nurse Foye waited until I was with Kathleen before breaking the news to her by telling her to be prepared for the worst, and not to be too hopeful of being cured.
A frightened look came into Kathleen's eyes, “Does that mean that I am going to die?" she asked.
"Well your x-rays are not so good," replied the nurse, "and it is always better to be ready. Anyway, I will leave you two to talk about it."
It is a hard thing to tell a child of 13 that she is going to die, and Kathleen was more mature and grown-up than other children of the same age. Two little red spots appeared in the delicate pallor of her cheeks, her fingers nervously grabbed the sheet, and she stared through the window far away in the distance. The truth had at last dawned on her that she was not to get well, but that she was to go all alone into the long valley of Eternity, to the land beyond the grave. I asked her if she minded very much, and she turned two frightened eyes towards me as she replied: "I do mind very much, I want to get well and go back to my gwanny.”
Gwanny” was how she always pronounced her grandmother's name.
"If God wants you to die will you be satisfied?’ I asked. “I will always do what God wants,” she replied, “but still I am going to pray to get well so that I can grow up."
