20th Anniversary of Hillsborough Tragedy – Bereaved Families Remember Their Loved Ones

She was not her usual chirpy self that day. The twinkle in her eye was missing. Her sunny smile that brought about so much warmth had vanished. Her unusually pale cheeks were telling their tales of tears being wiped away. Lost in deep thoughts, she sat beside her window in the staff room, looking at a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower collecting nectar. Trinity looked at the upset woman from outside the door. She knew that the teacher did not like being disturbed when she was silently exercising her grey cells, but this silence was different. There was pain and loneliness in the air. So the young student decided to do something to cheer up her favourite teacher, Ms Merry.

Trinity knocked politely and entered the staff room. Suddenly snapped back to reality by the knock, Ms Merry was quick to wipe out the tear that had just departed from her eye, looked at the young, bright student and smiled. “Ah Trinity! What’s the matter?”

“Er.. Ms Merry. I…I thought I’ll just discuss the news headlines on the internet with you.”, said Trinity, not knowing what other excuse she could have cooked up to spend time with the teacher of Journalism.

Ms Merry smiled in consent and gestured Trinity to have a seat. The enthusiastic student opened her laptop and browsed the web for the news. Both the teacher and the student spent some quality time discussing current affairs, finance and entertainment too. There was an interesting piece of article, comparing latest netbooks and notebooks being released in the market soon, which was also a hot topic for discussion. Both women found similar tastes in subjects like the operating system and processors of computers. Almost a half hour had gone by and Trinity was quite happy that the teacher had seemed to have forgotten her cause of pre-occupation. She thought that she would leave as soon as the last section on events happening in the city was done.

The first event read, “Fans remember Hillsborough dead.”

Trinity casually looked at the teacher she loved the most and was taken by surprise to see that the smile on the woman’s face had disappeared again. The student concluded that this piece of news had some connection to the teacher’s life. The article on the internet news was about people gathering together to mark the 20th anniversary of the accident that claimed 96 lives during the semi finals of the football match being played for the FA Cup.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?”, asked Trinity in a concerned voice.

The woman did not respond. There was a moment of silence.

“Ma’am if you wish to share something, I’ll be all ears. It might make you feel better. Please?”, implored Trinity desperately wanting to do something to bring back the smile on her teacher’s face.

Ms Merry wiped another tear that had rolled down her cheek and began, “Twenty years ago, on 15 April 1989, Fred and I had gone together to the Sheffield stadium to watch the FA Cup semi-finals, being played between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. We were both ardent Liverpool fans. In fact, we had fallen in love because of this common interest of ours.”

The teacher paused for a while, opened her drawer and took out a photo frame that had a picture of herself and Fred, holding hands and looking lovingly at each other.

Showing it to Trinity, she continued, “There was a huge crowd gathered at the stadium that day. Everyone was excited. The pens in the stadium were filled and some of them had their safety limits exceeded. The match began. Everything was great in the first few minutes. Then all of a sudden one of the crush barriers in the pen that we were standing in, gave way. Many people fell over. I was too shocked to move. Fred held my hand and pulled me along to safety. He ran back into the pen to help out the others who were injured. Along with the other men, he managed to help some injured women and children out of the pen. He was about to run in again, when I held his hand. Something from within me was telling me not to let him go. He placed his hand on my cheek and said – ‘I’ll be back Merry. Wait for me…’ But he never…”, the teacher could no longer hold back her tears.

Trinity placed her hand on Ms Merry’s shoulder. Silence filled the air again.

Then all of a sudden there was a knock on the door. A young girl with bright eyes peeped in. She looked at Ms Merry and said, “Mother, shall we go home?”

The teacher had managed to get a control over her emotions by then. She looked back at the pretty girl, smiled and said, “Yes my dear. I’ll come in a minute. You wait in the car outside.”

The girl left. Trinity was quite surprised as she had not known about the teacher’s daughter. Reading the expression on her student’s face, Ms Merry said, “That’s Neorah. She was one of the children who was saved by Fred that day. Unfortunately, her parents left her orphaned in that accident. She was hardly 2 at that time. I adopted her. She is my daughter now. Neorah, the hope and light of my life. Fred left me this hope to live on. Not to give up.”

The teacher smiled and packed her bag. The warmth in the smile, the twinkle in the eye and the rosiness of the cheeks had all returned. Trinity returned the smile and packed her laptop too.

“Thank you dear.”, said the teacher. The young woman smiled again. Both teacher and student walked together to the college gates, chirpily talking and laughing to their hearts’ content.