Photo: Horst Tappe/Getty
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of colored pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
“I feel all sleepy,” she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
Dahl dedicated two of his books to Olivia,James and the Giant PeachandThe BFG, but his wife Patricia Neal, Olivia’s mother, said Dahl never spoke about their daughter’s death.
The U.K.Independentcites a passage from one of Dahl’s recently discovered private notebooks.
Got to hospital. Walked in. Two doctors advanced on me from waiting room. How is she? I’m afraid it’s too late. I went into her room. Sheet was over her. Doctor said to nurse go out. Leave him alone. I kissed her. She was warm. I went out. ‘She is warm.’ I said to doctors in hall, ‘Why is she so warm?’ ‘Of course,’ he said. I left.
Dahl’s full essay is available to read on his website.You can also find links to read aboutthe children’s charity established in his memoryin 1990 or donate to it. “Roald Dahl wrote his letter 30 years ago but still today in the U.K. alone, 6,000 people are diagnosed with encephalitis each year. That’s 16 people every day. This, it seems is also considered an underestimate as encephalitis is very difficult to diagnose and like in the case of Roald Dahl’s daughter, is sadly often missed,” notes Dr. Ava Easton ofThe Encephalitis Society, who adds thatFebruary 22 is World Encephalitis Day, designed to spread awareness of the disease.
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source: people.com
