A Pursuit of Motiveless Faith
Only physical death had remained for Margery when she turned 58. Life had taken her through enough emotional trauma to make her feel so. Her only daughter Hannah had stopped visiting her in the recent years. Hannah was married and was busy in her own life and kept herself away from the rather tasteless farming life of her mother. Margery spent her time alone with only the memories of her miserable past. Everything that had happened in her life looked very meaningless. Her modest brain had already lost its sharpness and still, definitely not to its peace, kept trying hard to make sense out of all her sufferings.
Sometimes she used to admire the artistic beauty of her own paintings. Only then,she remembered that she once had a passionate affair with the colours. But everything had stopped when her right arm got paralysed. She did lose some motivation to live on at that time, but then her family life made her continue. For she had been a hard worker in the younger days, she managed her household duties very well. She cooked for herself and cleaned the dishes and the house, all of which, once upon a time she had done for a joyful family with her little Hannah. Later by then, she had to be doing all the routine just for herself.
Margery’s life was not without regrets. Almost forty years back she moved in with her husband and settled several miles away from her parents. She could not give enough time and money to her parents and particularly to her father during his critical illness leading to his ultimate demise, which, she did not expect. The society along with her own conscience kept blaming her. After all she and her husband were by then just recovering from a long financial crisis. The subsequent incidents including the selling of her father’s ancestral house enraged her. Her brother did it without informing her and taking all the money for himself. She did not talk to him again for decades since then.
Life had kept showing its ugly face often all of which she somehow overcame. She often remembered the younger days, perhaps the most struggling period in her life, when she and her husband lived in a tiny house. She was proud of playing a role in establishing the business success and their improvement to the current state. But the shock delivered by the sudden death of her beloved husband, James, 2 years earlier left nothing more in her life except the lonely house, a panic disorder and trembling limbs. She moved all his things to a separate room that she never entered again.
By that time a new anxiety entered into Margery’s life regarding the future of her daughter. Poor Hannah was widowed at a very young age even before the birth of her first son. Margery couldn’t sleep well until Hannah remarried again and settled. But the new trouble that awaited Margery was in the form of the three year old son of Hannah from her first marriage. Hannah and her new husband did not want him. He was born as a premature baby and Hannah thought he would serve well in the farms of her mother. So she left him with Margery almost like an orphan.
Margery, living only a purposeless life, somehow felt a compelling need to bring him up. She knew all too well of the difficulties of the farming life. She was dutiful to send him to the school. The grandson gave enough responsibilities to Margery in the form of taking care of him that made her life busy enough to forget some of the bitter past. Life was more in her control rather than she being controlled by it. Margery Ayscough lived 17 more years until 1660 AD. Towards her end, she again accommodated Hannah who was widowed for a second time along with three new granddaughters.The last thing that she heard of her grandson, Isaac Newton, was that he completed his high school with honours in mathematics and was doing his college at London.