It is as Natural to Die as to be Born

“It is natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.” –

Francis Bacon, philosopher and statesman, 1561 – 1626.

Gabriel and Mirabelle materialized in front of a gàrradh, a stone fence that surrounded a yard of more stones before a crude cabin. The cabin’s walls had been fashioned also of stone, atop which had been thrown wooden planks and then sod. A thin trickle of smoke wafted up from the chimney on the back of the cabin. In front by the door a young man about 20 years old sat on a bench, clad only in a worn pair of wool pants tied to his thin waist with a rope. He grabbed a bit of dry hay from the ground, touched it to a small clay pot by his side that held an ember of charcoal, and used it to light his pipe. As he puffed on it to get the tobacco to light, another young man climbed over the low stone wall, carrying a haversack.

“Hallo, Cormac,” the visitor said. “I’m awful glad t’ see you’ve got your brazier out tonight. I’ll be glad of a good pipe after a long walk. An’ I brought ye a bit of grog for a bit av company, aye?” He sat down on the ground to Cormac’s right, away from the door, and pulled out a bottle of dark amber liquid from his bag which he handed up to his friend. From inside the cabin a woman cried out, and another chorus of female voices murmured in response.

“Aye, Father Connelly, it’s allus good to see ye, but now I’m mighty glad to see ye!” Cormac exclaimed. He took a long draught of whiskey and passed the bottle back. “It’s a bit chilly tonight, and that old harridan Maisre threw me out afore I could grab me tow shirt!”

“I see ye got your pipe and bowl, though,” grinned Father Connelly.

“Aye,” admitted Cormac. “And me pants. A man’s got to set some priorities, see.” A couple of curious geese waddled over to the pair to see what they were doing at this time of night. “Shoo,” hissed Cormac, waving his pipe at them. “They’ll be knocking over the brazier, or worse, the bottle,” he explained to the good father.

“Best we not set the bottle down yet, then, aye?” he replied. Having already procured his own pipe from the sack, filled it with loose tobacco from a tin, tamped it with his forefinger and lit it, Father Connelly picked up the bottle, drank a goodly amount, and passed it back.

“So, Father,” said Cormac, after a respectable amount of silence and drinking had passed, “how did ye come so quickly? It’s only been an hour I’ve been thrown from me bed, innit?”

“Well, ye sent young Bill to get the midwife, aye?” replied the man, to which Cormac nodded. When it was plain that his wife Muireall was due any day, they decided to invite his nephew to stay with them for just this reason. “An’ Bill’s a bright lad, ain’t he? He came right round to the glebe house to get me. Thought ye might be in need of some company.”

“To be sure that’s a lad with his wits about ‘im,” agreed Cormac, taking another long pull off the bottle. “Where’s the boy run off to then?”

Father Connelly cogitated for a moment and decided it wouldn’t be unethical to reveal. “I suppose as every gossip in the village will have told the tale by morning, and he didn’t tell me in confession, I can tell ye now,” he replied slowly.

“The gels like their bit of palaver, now, don’t they?” mused Cormac.

“Aye, ‘tis true, ‘tis true,” he agreed. “Ye know Maisre needed to borrow old Aodhán’s milking stool for a birthing chair, aye? So Maisre’s gel Annie went to get it, which woke up the cow. I could hear it lowing down to the church, I did. I figure wily young Bill realized that it would wake up  Aodhán’s neighbors, too, see…”

Cormac grinned as he, too, understood what happened next. “Including one daughter of Jimmy Wilson, a  fair lass goes by Eileen?”

“Aye,” replied Father Connelly. “I suspect they’re out somewhere calling each other ‘Mo chroí’ and ‘mo chuisle’ right now.”

Over by the wooden gate in the front on the yard, Gabriel whispered to Mirabelle, “Muh-cree? Muh-cooshla? What do they mean?”

“You don’t have to whisper, Gabriel,” she answered brightly, smiling. “They can’t hear or see us. They mean, ‘my heart’ and ‘my pulse.’ Gaelic terms of endearment.”

“And I’ll bet they’re kissing, too,” he said, to show he knew what “endearment” meant. Mirabelle’s smile froze in place, and she put her arm around Gabe, realizing that he had only ever heard of these things from books and not experience. “Yes, they most certainly are,” she said. “Perhaps we should go inside now and see about Fiona’s birth.”

 

Inside the cabin, the only light was provided by a fire over which hung a large, black cauldron half-full of boiling water. The hissing of the roiling water could hardly be heard over the loud, vexatious conference of women trying to lead a clearly overdue, pregnant Muireall toward a huge brass bed that dominated the interior. There was barely room for the two girls pulling at the exasperated mother-to-be and the older, experienced midwife who was attempting to pull them off her.

“Stop! Stop! She’s no about to set on that bed, you foolish fishwives!” cried Maisre. “Annie! How many times have I tol’ ye that it’s better for a gel to stand when she’s pushing?”

“Maisre!” cried Muireall. “Don’t let them pull at me so! I won’t even sleep in that…that thing!”

“What?” said Annie. “If I had a fine bed such as that, I’d never get up in the morning!”

“It takes a team of wild horses to drag you out of bed as it is,” replied Maisre, her mother.

“You can have the damn bed, Annie, if you’ll only let go of me!” Muireall screamed.

Annie let go of Muireall suddenly, causing her to fall into the other girl, who fell against the head of the brass bed with a loud thonk and a wail. “You heard her, Ma! She said I could have the bed!”

“You’ll have no such thing, you wicked gel. Now get some of those strips o’  cloth out of the pot, and wrap one around Ginny’s poor head. You’ve given her a fright such as never been seen since the baby Jesus first spoke to his mother out of the manger. Do as I say, Annie! Now!” Annie sheepishly complied, fetching the hot cloth and tending to Ginny.

“I’m sure as sorry, Muireall,” Maisre said, leading the poor, young woman away from the bed, as much as the tiny room and huge bed would allow. “I don’ t know what’s gotten into them, except as every other woman in the village does insist on lying abed to give birth. Against my advice, I might add.”

“It’ s all right,” replied Maisre. “Ow!” She clutched at her swollen belly.

“They’ re coming faster now, aren’t they? We’ re at the pinch of the game, I’d say. It’d be better if you would squat and lean back against Annie, but that fool would drop you in a hot second. I think we’d best set you on the stool, leaning back against the wall there. Annie, you stoat, bring me the milking stool!” As Annie got up from patting Ginny uselessly on the head to get it, Gabriel turned to Mirabelle.

“That bed,” he said. “That’s the one in that corridor that my mother was sleeping on.  Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mirabelle answered. “That’s what gave me the clue to come to this life, you see. You and your parents lived many lives together, but this is the one I think Judith was most preoccupied with. Wherever she is.”

“You don’t know?” Gabe asked. “If you don’t know, how will I ever figure this all out?”

“I’m not her oversoul, Gabriel. I’m yours. Maximillian is your father’s. We haven’t seen or heard from Miranda in a long time, in your terms. We know she’s busy at work on some very important project, but we don’t know what, nor when she will come back.”

“Who’s that man beside Muireall, and why are his hands glowing?” Gabe asked. For indeed, there was a young man in his mid-twenties kneeling beside her as she leaned back on the stool. In the low, flickering light from the fire you could plainly see the concern on his face, and one hand rested on the back of her neck, while the other rested on her belly.

“That is your father, Gabriel. He’s trying to ease the pain of her contractions.”

“Dad! Dad!” Gabriel yelled, starting over to speak to him.

“Wait, Gabriel!” Mirabella cried, but Gabriel kept trying to get the man’s attention to no avail.

“He can’t see or hear me,” said Gabe sadly, returning to Mirabella’s side.

“Even if he could, he wouldn’t know who you are. Your father in your life is Muireall in this one. He’s dreaming himself here to assist in Fiona’s birth, just as she will when you are born years later. Howard has just arrived from having a dream from when he was a young man before meeting your mother. You weren’t born yet, and he wouldn’t know who you are.”

“He’s helping her with her pain?” asked Gabriel. “He was professor of religion and philosophy when I knew him. When did he learn to heal?”

“Well, it was a skill he gained over many lifetimes. All of his lives are present here for the birth, too, but your father is, more or less, the most present, I would say. That’s why they’ve taken his form. He never got to use that skill much in his life as a professor. It was a time when science took over and declared such things as faith healing irrelevant or impossible. You might have noticed, though, when you were a child and were sick with a fever, you always felt better after he touched your forehead. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Gabe agreed, surprised to remember. “And his hands were always so cool. Much cooler than I thought they should have been. I always thought that memory was one I made up, or that I was too feverish to remember things properly.”

Mirabella smiled sadly. “We almost always alter the facts to fit our beliefs,” she said. “Anyway, he continued to study and develop his healing abilities in his dreams  since they couldn’t be acknowledged by his waking self, his scientific self.”

About that time, Ginny and Annie had come to stand on either side of Muireall, while Maisre went out to get a breath of fresh air and let Cormac know how she was doing.

“Oh Lord,” said Maisre, stepping out into the cool, night air. As she wiped the sweat from her forehead and stretched her back, she turned to see Cormac’s visitor. “Oh, hallo, Father. Allus good to see you, it is. I’m sure glad that Cormac isn’t getting seasoned into a stupor all by hisself. You’ll see to him, will ye?”

“Of course, good woman. You can rely upon this humble servant of the Lord to see to the Lord’s work,” replied the young man seriously, although there was a twinkle in his eye.

“You may have the Lord’s work to do, but I’ve the work of cleaning up after the devil got into Cormac here, and you know how it goes with a man when he’d been drinking after a hard day digging in the fields for a scrap of potatoes. Well, I’d best be getting in afore Annie does aught to affront Muireall any further,” she said, sighing. “She tried to get her to lie in that bed earlier.”

“Oh God, no!” both men said at once.

“Oh, yes, that gel will be the death of me!” Maisre said as she went back into the cabin.

 

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