Chapter 9

IT may come as a surprise to learn that on one occasion Kathleen became a little jealous. A patient had been re-admitted to the sanatorium, from which she had been discharged some time previously because she had a relapse. The patients told Kathleen that in future I would come out to see that patient only, as I had known her during her first term in the sanatorium. On the following Saturday, I was not long with Kathleen when she asked me a few times to call to another ward to see Mary Devers. I did so, and in a short time I returned, and I noticed Kathleen was anxiously watching me.

"You didn't stay long with Mary," she said. “No,” I replied, "I wanted to come back to you as soon as possible.” "Will you come out to see only Mary from this on?" she asked. "No," I answered, "I am always going to come out to see you. Why did you ask that?”

"The other patients told me that you were not coming out to see me anymore, that you would come out to see Mary because you knew her before you knew me?”

“Don’t mind what the other patients said, they were only joking.”

“Well, they shouldn't be joking, they hurt me when they said that,” she said quite seriously.

It was some time during these weeks that I asked Kathleen if she would give me a lock of her hair before she died. ”Of course, I will,” she replied immediately, "sure I won't want it when I'm dead, and if you brought scissors you could take it now.”

Actually, I had brought scissors and having told her so, she requested to be lifted up in the bed, and pulling off the blue ribbon, she shook the dark brown hair and let it hang loosely down all over her face. “Now, pick any bit you wish,” she offered.

One large lock growing over her left temple was a lighter brown than the rest so I collected it all in one bundle and told her it seemed to be the nicest bit. “Well, cut off that bit then,” she ordered.

But as the scissors continued to cut she began to get anxious. “Take care,” she warned, “and don't cut too much, it might be seen.”

She saw the bundle I cut off. "Oh, dear,” she protested, "you took too much. Quick, quick, get me your mirror.”

I held the small pocket mirror for her and she rubbed the gap left in her hair. "Anyone could see that,” she protested, but by arranging her hair and tying the ribbon in a special way, we were able to hide the gap left by the missing lock, and she was satisfied. She held the lock while I tied a ribbon around it and as I put it in my pocket she looked at me and said, "I am glad I gave you that because when I am gone you will still have a bit of me.” Today that lock of hair is as fresh and glossy as it was on the evening it was cut from the rest of her hair, long since turned to dust in the wind-swept graveyard in Cloughmore. It is a nice lock, which has brought tears to the eyes of those who have ever seen it.

That evening she looked so childishly young with her hair hanging down over her face, but a few evenings afterwards she became like a little baby for a short time. I had brought some grapes to a patient who wasn't well, not thinking that Kathleen would care for any of them. But when she heard about them she expressed a wish to get some. It was an easy matter to get the grapes back again, and with a knife, they were peeled, halved and the stones taken out. (6) I sat on the bed with Kathleen and said, “pretend that you are a baby once again and I will feed you.”

She looked up quite seriously and said, "I would not like to be a baby again and go through all the pain I have gone through. But I will let on I am a baby and you can feed me.”

Whenever she opened her mouth a grape was put into it and when she had it swallowed she opened her mouth for another bit. She smiled, giggled and laughed, and her pains were all forgotten in the fun of being fed like a baby.

"I hope they won’t make you sick,” I said after a while.

“How could they?’ she replied, “they are doing me a lot of good already,”

She had not eaten anything for some days, so I stopped after giving her half a dozen with the promise that she would get more later on if these which she had eaten did not make her sick.