As I Lay Dying

Thirty six

Spring 1919

Jimmy had once promised to marry Ellen within a week of his feet next touching English soil.

It didn't happen as he had planned.

A week turned into another.

A subdued Christmas passed. Although Jimmy's family were beyond happy to have him home, their tiny village was marked by too many empty seats at family tables for anyone to celebrate.

The thick snow on the Yorkshire moors had began to melt before Jimmy finally walked down the aisle with Ellen. It wasn't the joyous wedding they had so long dreamed of, for Jimmy seemed reluctant and he couldn't hide it.

I think I understand why. Jimmy's family cottage is tiny and we share it with his parents and five young brothers. In the months after we returned, both Jimmy and I could be found in the early hours, afraid to sleep, afraid to close our eyes and wander the trenches again. The full horror of what we had seen didn't seem to hit us fully until we returned. Our view of life had changed, I can't say if it seemed more precious or more disposable to us.

Death of loved ones or friends is a cataclysmic event in anyone's life. By this age you perhaps expect to lose your grandparents and spend time adjusting to the grief. Perhaps, for the unlucky few, death of unexpected relatives and friends frequent their life at a young age. Grief is part of life, it's something that you take time to process, go through until you can remember the best times, until it teaches you how to live and appreciate your own life. It's part of life's course. You learn to accept death as part of life slowly, in the natural course of losing loved ones.

We hadn't had that.

We witnessed death of friends, brothers in arms, daily. We saw people we cared for die every single day. There was no time to mourn, no sad funerals to remember the dead by. We just watched them fall, one after the other, wondering if we would be next. It was the most unnatural introduction to our own mortality imaginable.

Although we never speak of it, by the mere presence of each other, we can never forget. Each time we look at one another we're immediately taken back there.

Ellen didn't make any fuss. She waited, as she had done for so long already, until finally Jimmy agreed to the wedding, pushed on by his mother.

I would have privately wondered if it was a good idea to wed under such duress, but for one thing. The only times Jimmy seems happy was when he is with Ellen. The light that shines in his eyes is so tender, so utterly in love. Since he has married, when his terrified screams rip through the cottage in the deepest hours of the night, they quiet almost immediately, soothed by a soft murmur. She can pull him back from his frequent daydreams with a gentle word or touch. That's not to say she doesn't get her own way and keep everything in order. Ellen is perfect for Jimmy, now more so than ever.

I've always loved Shakespeare and whenever I look at Ellen, her tiny frame shadowed by his huge one as she nags and fusses, one quote always comes to my mind; "Though she is but small, she is fierce."

Jimmy's problem isn't Ellen.

It is me.

***

"We'll have to start thinking about burning the heather." Jimmy points to the large patches of purple heather that spread as far as the eye can see. "We'll mark off the land piece by piece, get some of the lads from the village up."

He glances at me with a frown the slams his spade into the earth. It still feels odd to see him dressed in a shirt and trousers, his flat cap slung on his head carelessly. In all the years I've known him I've rarely seen him out of uniform. This Jimmy, the Yorkshire farm boy, is still unfamiliar to me although it's what he always was.