28 January 1915
Dear Diary,
Mother has been deceased for a year today, and socially I can now come out of any level of mourning, although Father doesn’t yet want that for me. I want to though, I need to start to feel more like myself. Living in this boarding house has suited Father and I well, it’s meant that we have clean linen and three meals a day, but I haven’t really been able to properly socialise. There is a piano downstairs in the parlour, and I am resolving now to start playing it after dinner a couple of times a week. If that is well received, as I believe it will be, then I will ask Essie Ackland, and some of my other friends to come around and help me hold some “At home” musicals for the war effort.
Eileen.
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10 December 1915
Dear Diary,
Arthur has just told me that he’ll be shipping out for the Western Front in 10 days. I may never see him again, war being what it is. To think, if I hadn’t started playing mini concerts in the boarding house parlour, he’d have never come with his friend, and I would likely have never met him. I pray he comes home safe though, because I think I love him, and I think he loves me. We’ve promised to try to reconnect after he comes home, to see if there is any spark there for us in the long term. I pray there will be.
Eileen
These diary entries are my own creation based on known events that occurred within 1915 in the life of Eileen, my great grandmother.