Phyllis and Barbara

I love call the midwife. It joins together call my loves babies, motherhood, nursing, faith and history. I love it. I've just caught up on last nights episode. A couple of series ago they dealt with a Ruth and Naomi relationship. An older and younger friend. Drawn together by situation (working together) but a deeper fondness occurring over time until you realise they are inseparable. They are true, if unlikely friends, Last week Phyllis offered to nurse a flu stricken Barbara to give Barbara's sweet husband a break. It wasn't flu. Barbara had meningitis and septicaemia. This week it looked like Barbara may pull through, although there was grief as she realised her lifelong dream of being a midwife, her career and vocation would be ripped away from her due to loosing feeling in her fingers. Yeah, a little close to home. My circulation in my fingers remains in tact but the scars left from the past year are almost certainly going to have an impact on the only career I have considered since my teens and also my wish to work in children's ministry. Tom, Barbara's husband, and Phyllis support one another and Tom recognises the affection and love between the two women. Barbara confides in Phyllis that she knows she will die and how she hates to see her loved ones hurting as they worry and grief for her. Barbara looses consciousness, Tom and Phyllis are called to her bedside. Curate Tom and atheist Phyllis recite Psalm 23 over Barbara and she dies. They are not mother and daughter. Not really, the wisdom of older women is often referred to culturally and biblically. The NCT is kind of a reflection, breastfeeding peer supporters, women's bible study groups. Being supported by a woman whose maturity in years or experience is not a new or unexpected thing. Barbara and Phyllis's relationship was marketed as sweet and unusual but as deep and special and true. So as I recall the gradual growth of my Ruth and Naomi friendship, the point it became noticeable as special. Barbara asked Phyllis to be her bridesmaid, My Phyllis told me I was her best friend. Something I'd never have labeled us as at that time as I didn't expect the role of best friend to be with a woman a generation older. I reflect on the closeness between Tom and Phyllis joined in their love and fear for Barbara and I think to my Tom and Phyllis sitting nearby me in the GP surgery, and on my bedroom floor as I tried to decide what I would be allowed to take in my suitcase to a psychiatric hospital. I remember the guilt I felt as I heard their voices shake as they said goodbye to me. It's now an hour after watching the episode. Barbara's death is sad. The meaning a parallels I drew whist watching it. The grief that the Phyllis and Barbara characters in my life have been parted, not by death, but parted painfully. I'm still crying. I'm not crying for a TV character. The characters in Call the Midwife are now not based on memoirs and real people. No, whilst I've been known to allow a few tears to slip out at weepy films, full on sobbing, snotty, body heaving crying is reserved for real life sadness. For real grief. Perhaps people who fail to understand why I am still so broken, could look at the love Ruth had for Naomi, or Phyllis for Barbara and Barbara for Phyllis, and look again at why I am struggling so.