Been here before

 

I’ve just finished reading a Christmas present book by Emma Donoghue entitled The Pull of the Stars. 

The title is taken from the origins of the word influenza which ancient cultures thought came about because of the influence, or pull, of the stars.  If only it were that simple!

Emma Donoghue’s book covers forty eight hours in a maternity ward of a Dublin hospital.  As interesting as that may be, this narrative is intensified because it is set in 1918 and covers the pandemic which took more lives than World War One.  A pandemic we never memorialised (unlike the Great War) and which we largely forgot until March 2020 when we had our own appointment with history in the form of Covid.

How ironic that Donoghue delivered her final draft of this book to her publishers in March 2020!  Within four months, even as we lingered in the first stage of the Coronavirus Pandemic, The Pull of the Stars found its way on to the bookshelves.

It's a frantic paced and gripping account of hospital life at a time when no vaccines were available; hot whisky was liberally administered for medicinal purposes, but I suspect it did nothing more than soothe the nerves.

Donoghue’s book contains the grim reality of a hospital ward in 1918, and it is surely a cause for great thanksgiving that advances in science so significantly reduced the possible death toll this time round.

I was grateful for the book as it reminded me, through story, that we have, indeed, been here before.

One of the values of inter-generational conversation is that those with nimbler feet realise the path of life has already been walked before by those who now go at a slower pace.

2023 will present us all with both new and old challenges.  We’ll need wisdom to discern those familiar problems which can be coped with using tried and tested responses, and those that demand a fresh approach. 

As a read The Pull of the Stars I realised once again that history can indeed be our friend, companion and often, our guide.