Thomas

I found the journals a month after we had buried him. It was my job to clear out the house and dispose of all the worldly goods Thomas owned according to his will.
They were in the bottom of the old chest under his bed. I had decided within the first couple of days to leave the chest to last. I needed to dismantle the bed just to get to it.

Its three days since I found the journals. They begin well before he was born; 90 years ago his mother had started recording her joys, her sorrows and the fear of losing the man she loved. She was the daughter of a local farming family and he was the son of the general store owner. Socially at opposite ends of the scale in those days and as he was of immigrant stock recently arrived their love for one another seemed an impossible dream.

Page after page revealed the fears, the horrible guilt she felt sneaking out to meet him; prayers for forgiveness and a hope that some how it would come right. It might have been the fourth journal that revealed they had eloped. Bravely going against all opposition and returned late one weekend as husband and wife. She kept recording through the years; how they had struggled in town, their friends their only source of companionship until five years on they knew they had to leave.

Thomas was about two by now and she records his first steps, his first words and through the years his progress in life. For a while the journals are brief records of the cost of living, the daily expenses of bread and milk, the introduction of rationing and yet there is an element of contentment and ease felt.

With war came the journals of fear; of a mother expressing her doubts she would ever see her son. Thomas had enlisted and headed off overseas. He would spend some four years there; three as a POW before the long journey back. It is with his arrival that the journal cover will change from red to blue and her writings again explore the beauty of nature; the joy of a mother reunited with her son and of the daily happenings.

The journey continues taking me to his first glimpse of his future wife Lily. The wonderment he felt when she accepted his proposal and his despair when she died during childbirth. There is the rage that he feels at being left alone, the bewilderment at having a small baby to take care of and the gradual realisation that the child is the joy he and Lily had both wanted.