Siobhan Limerick: What I put my faith in

My first baby lasted four hours -- a girl, God be praised, so fair and white with pink lips and pink skin and lovely, lovely blue eyes. They stayed open for the first happy five minutes. And then they closed, never to open again, the faint beat of her even fainter heart stopping just four hours into the morning.

A boy for my sainted husband came just ten months later. He outlived the poor girl by just an hour -- made it five, that one with dark hair but his skin never lost the purple hue because his breathing didn't work quite right and I couldn't look at him very much. I said goodbye to him an hour before he went, because the doctor said there was no hope so why put yourself through that and I cried myself to sleep anyway.

The next two lasted even longer, one day for the third -- a boy, a beautiful blond boy with his father's chiseled nose and sharp jawline -- and four days, I couldn't believe my luck, for the fourth, my second girl, so homely and plain with her hairlip, all I could do was fall in love right away. The lovely girl, and the strongest of my four. She made it a whole six days before her heart gave out, too.

And now they all lie beneath the same grave, stacked vertically with the common stone, "the children Doherty-Limerick."

What I could only do for my husband four times, I could try a fifth. And a sixth. Though these times -- the children made it. At least, they've made it this long, right into their twenties, God bless their sainted souls. My son, Patrick -- stronger than any could imagine, the splitting image of my dear brother, Monsignor Collin Doherty. And Agnes -- more determined with that jutting chin, her red pony-tailed hair, her emerald green eyes, so determined even if it means leaving the dear Church to marry that Protestant heathen -- at least she lives, at least she survives. My Agnes.