A pregnant mother receives word that her husband has been killed in action.
Via Dolorosa
The officer speaks quietly, accompanied by a priest. They tell of her husband's courage, paying the ultimate price for his country’s freedom, and how the nation will always owe him a debt of thanks and honor.
Sickness suddenly gorges into her mouth.
It is ridiculous to think of him dead, never to return to a home that smells of pastry, furniture polish, and freshly laundered clothes. For two long months after the news she has lay in a maternity bed, receiving full time care. Not a day passes without family at her bedside. The priest comes each morning till she can no longer face him, or believe in his voice.
She does not concern herself with thoughts about her deceased husband’s courage, or his bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, her thoughts are with much simpler things: who will tend the brambles overgrowing the garden, strangling the daffodils; the loss of his affection, the future, the strength and protection of his love for their soon to be born child?
Her body has served as accommodation for seven months, a secure world of vernix coated love, life and hope. Suddenly, and without warning, that same place becomes one of turmoil, while some premature, instinctive need to survive teeters, fighting through stomach cramps, grasping hold of destiny–-wanting to live and breathe in another world.
The uterus continues to cause discomfort, ligaments have loosened and the pelvis begins to relax. It is time. Pain relief is shunned. The midwife alerts the team for a possible emergency caesarean section. She does not want to push, she wants to die. No pain can possibly match the needlepoint of her grief.
The midwife knows, want it or not, this baby is going to fight for its destiny. There is nothing a mother, even one sick with grief, can do to prevent this miracle happening. It is the incarnate delight of all things that abide.
The pain comes like madness, gone, then returning. Her body absorbs it without dying. She simply cannot face the terror of yielding to childbirth alone, and when the storm fills her stomach she remembers only the sound of their first summer, the fecundity of love's spirit, and the pain subsides to weariness.
But pain, this ancient pain, with all its genuflection survives grief, cares nothing for the ghastly gaiety of death. In one surge of immense, yet unseen splendor, a child asks to be born. It is carried through a canal under the banner of fearful ecstasy. Legs shake; features contort like the grotesque sculpture of pain, sinews strain, urine flows, faeces bulge, blood congeals on the sheets till it looks like a scene of slaughter.
In all the turmoil a boy is born between her legs. Energy drains into a well of sleepy satisfaction and contentment. It is him, a very special little boy, lying there between her trembling thighs, and the room is suddenly overwhelmed with happiness.
She holds him, his slippery little body, tight, tight to her breast. Oh the smell of sweet vanilla.
Her eyes, tired and heavy adore the moment.
The child is removed, cleaned, wrapped and given back to her. But there is concern. The placenta is still fast in her uterus. The midwife tugs on the cord gently, over and over, pressing her fist down on the abdomen in a last-gasp effort to pressure its removal. The bleeding is excessive... mother can feel the blood sieving out between her legs. In sudden tortuous pain her flailing arm strikes the mid-wife as the pressure violates what she can stand.
The placenta has to be removed if she is not to bleed to death. Finally, hopelessly, she breaks down, tears running down her face, mucus running into her mouth, bodily functions running unchecked. It is the final degradation. The child is no longer not the primary concern.
Though numb, exhausted and confused, fear strikes at her again; the fear of never waking up to be with her son.
She cries her heartbreak. “My boy...” and then, in a moment of descending calm she asks the midwife to be sure that someone protects him, keeps him from evil, loves him always.
In this moment of perfect understanding, the path of life and death is the walk of Via Dolorosa.
It's almost Christmas. Lynn Basil is writing her last book about a secret entrance into the magical doll land of Sha Bebe that she loves so much. Bagannos have taken over the world! Lynn finally meets her dolls in real life. Can she write in a Secret
