Ms. Davies’ wrinkled face scans the room. “I been livin’ in this contry for over 65 yeers.” She leans in and puts the backside of her hand flat against the smiling corner of her mouth. “But I’m still the Queen’s gurl!” She laughs to herself and falls back against the couch. The lattice curtains flutter at her movement. “Oh dear, dear.”
           The clock ticks behind her in the corner. “ ‘Tis good to have ya here Fatha…reminds me of when I was a gurl and the priest, who was an Irishman uh course, would only be at our chuch on a Sunday once in a month. That ‘tis, ‘til my own fatha petitioned the bishop to let ‘em stay full tyme. I been missin’ Holy Communion, Fatha. You don’t know what comfort He brings.”
           I ponder her devotion and recall a few lines from Jerusalem:
            She receives the Eucharist. I close the pyx and the book and we continue our visit. She begins to share stories of her childhood in England, of the green meadows in the countryside, of innocence shattered in the war (or as she says the “wawr”) years and her work in the bomb factories. She goes on to tell of her tour of Italy and Germany with her husband and their visit to Notre Dame in Paris. She glances at something behind me, still speaking about the candles inside that cathedral, the flames flickering in the light of the rose windows and her deep love of the Blessed Mother.
            “I’ve had the same ‘lil statue of Mary since I made my First Communion.” I turn to look at the image. “I place ‘er on the edge of my bed every mornin’ and remember all of the people I have loved, and pray for the dead, ‘specially those I know have no one to pray for them. I look at ‘er and remember also all of the trips we have taken together.
             “She was always what I packed in my bag furst. On one of the last trips I took, after the security had gotten so much stricta, a guard started to reach into the bag and was asking about ‘er. I said to em: ‘don’t touch ‘er…if somethin’ happens ta her, then youd’a wished ya’d never been born.’ He put her right down.” Again she laughs. “Oh dear, dear. I’m naughty a’int I? Oh, but I love my Motha.”
            Ms. Davies would make yearly trips to England to be with her family until she turned 80—nineteen years ago. “I knew I was nearin’ the end of my gettin’ around in the same way I always had. I’d gone to my hometown with my sister and her family and we had gone to the market where I used to love to go as a ‘lil gurl. They were happy times. We turned up the street and made our way to a little spot on the hill, the most beautiful ‘lil patch of wildflowers you would ever see. I looked at ‘em and said to myself, ‘this is the last time that I will see this.’ And it ‘twas, it ‘twas.”
              “But every night, dear Fatha, I still go to England. I pop in a disc from the BBC that starts in an airplane and lands right over the Cliffs of Dover. I land there too, and in my memory I go to all of those beloved places of my home country, and I live my life there all over again.”
              A tear migrates down her cheek, then follows the groove of a wrinkle to her chin. In my mind, the England hymn gives way to a homeland called Heaven: