Mister Nobody

Bertie had no family. None to speak of. Bertie had been a decent child; he’d worked hard at everything he did. He went to school on the days he wasn’t looking after his father.

When both his parents had passed, he joined the army. There, he found a family and friends. Bertie was sent to the far corners of the world and loved every single minute of it.

One day, while walking in a little park, he met Elsa. Bertie met her more than once, until the day he asked her to marry him.

They had a child, Maisie, who had made it to her twenty-third year when she left them for good. Elsa’s broken heart never mended, and she went to join her daughter a year later.

Bertie never met anyone else. He worked for the council until he retired. He played bingo and bought ten cigarettes which did him for the week.

When he was seventy-three, Bertie contracted Covid-19. He had no family, no friends left and died several weeks after entering the hospital.

Perhaps the Undertaker was overworked, or tired or was just having a bad day, but he had labelled the box that Bertie lay in as ‘Mister Nobody’.

But what the Undertaker didn’t understand, is that there is no such thing as a Nobody.
The elements that had made up Bertie’s bones had come from a galaxy almost 3.4 billion light-years away. The water in his body had been manufactured at the other end of the Universe long before the Earth had been created.

The elements in his skin had come into being when a giant star had exploded at the very edge of the Milky Way.

So, you see, he wasn’t a Nobody. He was a little slice of the Universe made human for the shortest of time. That is, until he was called back to be among his real family again.

Sleep well, Bertie. Sleep well.

bobby stevenson 2020