The sketch I have drawn, was done a few years ago now, but it has a significant reference to the story that follows, a vicarage of considerable size that I drew from a photograph that was shown to me one afternoon, sitting in the gardens of the hospital in Bournemouth recovering from what I thought at the time was close to the end of my days.
As many know, music is the lifeblood to the existence that I feel privileged to have been given.
Irrespective of the troubles around me in the world today and the sympathy I have for those not so fortunate as myself. The joy that music gives me in one form or another I sometimes wish I could pass on to those suffering hardship and sorrow from tragedies that have
occurred to them.
One such time in my life, when
hospitalised, broke my heart one morning as I looked out of the window in the
ward I was in. The beauty that had been crushed, leaving a shell of a young
person struggling to find reason to live was touching everyone that looked out
of that window.
As I lay there in bed
the ‘Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana’ was being softly played from the
hospital headphones I had on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQLRqK2ME88
I have tried to show
and play the above video from utube on this Blog without much success, (I am
still a complete novice with these modern gadgets) so all I can seem to do is
link it for you to listen to.
******************
Her pitch-black hair was a wonder
to anyone looking in her direction, the long locks, braided and platted shone
in the morning sun as if an imaginative artist had created it for a sculpture
or picture, and you would be forgiven to think an expert coiffeur had spent
hours that morning tending with the love and care of his or her creation at
dawn before anyone opened their eyes.
Not so!
Her back to the window that everyone who passed looked out
to see, a single forlorn figure in a wheelchair facing the lake, her black
hair, by reason of her prominent position, challenged inspection from visitors
to the wards or medical staff going about their daily duties. She never moved
from the spot of grass in front of the hospital gardens, staying there all
morning until the trolleys could be heard trundling down the corridors with
lunch for the wards. When she turned, her dark sunken eyes for one brief moment
met mine, at this time you would expect a beauty to face you, and such
expectations are not usually a disappointment after seeing the illusion of
obvious care her crowning glory presented to the onlooker from the back.
There had been beauty, that was obvious, but now the
sadness in her eyes took away that beauty, there was an emptiness of life
facing you, a resigned distant wretchedness to that face that had turned so
many heads in the past. Pale without colour in any of the features, emphasized
the pitch-black surrounding tresses that fell over her shoulders.
I had to find out more, without prying into her private
life, I had to know her story, I had to talk to her.
That music created a resolve to some how cheer her up, to
show her, if I could, the wonders still left for her to live for.
(to be continued)
Thanks for stopping by.
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