A Small Brown Sparrow

 

Amelia was eighty-six.  She had only one eye; the other had been damaged irreparably when she was born.  Now her second eye was almost unusable because of a cataract.  Her eye operation was planned for about Christmas so the surgeon recommended a holiday prior to the ordeal.

 

She was a charming lady with exquisite manners, a soft voice, and a permanently cheerful philosophy.  We asked her about her previous holidays.  “Oh”, she told us, “I want to stay with y nephew about seven years ago”.  That seemed a long time ago.  “Where does your nephew live?”.  “In Greenford” - - another town about five miles away.

 

“When did you last go to the sea?”.

“I have never been to the sea”.

“Never seen the sea?”.

“No”.

 

So we decided that she should.  One blustery morning we wheeled her to the edge of the soft sandy beech and eased her onto her feet.  We sank ankle deep in slow steps until we reached the high water edge where the compacted sand helped our progress.  Amelia’s wisp of enthusiasm evaporated.  Her steps became more reluctant.  She protested above our reassuring voices.  “No further”, she pleaded, “it is roaring at me”.  A few steps further on and she stopped again.  “I’m getting all wet”, she objected, as the flung spray wetted our cheeks.

 

Three more slow steps and then she stopped again, a wondering gaze in her blue eyes.  She was searching the foreground just before her.  As though she had glimpsed the pearly gates, her voice sank to a whisper.  “I can see it”, she announced.  We watched her rapt expression for a few seconds, then Lorraine whispered back.  “What is it like?”.  Still in a hoarse whisper Amelia described what she could see.  “It’s all white”, she said, “and it is coming over at me”.  For some minutes we stood in the gusting wind, the spume dampening our clothes, our hair and our tingling faces.  Then we led Amelia back to the promenade and to her wheelchair.

We took her to the sea front every day after that, but she never asked to be taken to the water’s edge again.  It was as though, sitting placidly in her wheelchair and hearing the splash and such of the turbulent waves just below the promenade, had imprinted the picture of the exploring water on her brain in that prolonged glimpse, that she could forever see the sea.

 

She had her cataract operation a few months later and, after many almost sightless months, she was able to discern a small brown sparrow on the bare leafless bough of the plum tree at the bottom of her garden.

 

She was delighted.

 

It was only a few months later that we learned that she had a massive cancer in her abdomen.  She died early in the Spring before she could enjoy another holiday.