"Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many"

-Mark Twain

On this day, which marks 𝟱𝟬 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 of being alive on this planet, I sought out a piece of writing that my dad sent to me some time ago. It detailed the traumatic and dramatic time I had as a baby coming into this world:

“She was lying in an incubator, with a feeding tube in one nostril and her hands and legs tethered by bandages. I had received a phone call from the doctor who was head of the children’s department at Altnagelvin Hospital. He asked me to come to his home where he would talk to me about our new baby. In a nicely furnished front room, he set me down and began to talk. He explained that our baby was not well; something was preventing her from feeding properly, and then he dropped the bombshell. “Mr McClelland, I know you are a man of God and that you believe in prayer, but I have to tell you, there is nothing man or God can do for this child of yours. She is going to die.”

…It was then decided that Rosemary would be sent to Belfast, to the children’s hospital, where further treatment would be attempted. The trouble, as outlined by a Dr. Cochrane, was the existence of a small cyst or sac behind Rosemary’s heart. This was gradually filling with fluid, expanding, pressing on other organs and preventing her from feeding normally…

… At about eleven o’clock, I telephoned the hospital again and spoke to Dr Cochrane. He explained the operation had been successful. She recovered and grew up to be a strong, healthy child – the only problem; deafness in one ear, which accompanies the defect she was born with….

Many years later, during my time in hospital, Rosemary was there, almost every day and once or twice throughout the night. She sat with me, helped to feed me, encouraged me and read to me. One night, in the wee small dark hours, she sat and read to me as tears rolled down my cheeks. Tears, because I remembered the wee baby who lay so helpless in the incubator. Now she was ministering to me, an old and very sick man. No wonder we still refer to her as our ‘Miracle Child’.”