'Buck Rodgers'

Dulcie and I were chatting at the table today after cleaning out a cupboard.Her next door neighbour is fighting leukaemia at the moment and happily is responding well to his new treatment but because of the struggle he and his family have been through she was saying how lucky she was but that you can never make any real plans.I agreed and said "Yes, you never know what is round the corner."...which prompted her to tell me this story;She said that when she was younger her brother or one of her husbands brothers was struggling to look after his son as his wife was ill. Dulcie said that she loved children and rode on her horse, (there were very few cars in those days) to their house and said she would take the lad and look after him for them.She said he was a lovely lad and loved riding with her and she called him 'Buck', Buck Rodgers.She said he was a happy lad but one day she said he was very restless and would not settle and she knew something was wrong. She wondered about calling for the doctor but was persuaded to wait overnight. She said she slept with him all night but in the morning he was no better. Her husband's (she called him 'Pop') Father, ( Pop's pop) had one of the few cars in the area and they got him to come and they headed off to the hospital. She was holding Buck on her lap in the front seat."Two miles from the hospital," she said, "he died in my arms." She said "I knew he had gone. They said it was the 'black meningitis"When they finally got to the hospital she said she couldn't move, she was just paralysed and stayed in the car while Pop's pop carried Buck in.She was told that they would not have been able to do anything if they had got him there sooner but I could tell she regretted waiting that night.(I could have cried, as I could just cry now, writing about it.)"It grows you up," she said. "That, grows you up."