Stolen

Excellence Award in the 'Top Secret 2016' competition



My lungs are filled with phlegm. The harsh hacking of coughing echoes around the mine shaft and I can feel the grime plastered across my face. There is no escape from the constant reminder of why we work the mines day in day out. Now, we have only limited time.

At first, the lure of the mines was inescapable. What could be better than safe conditions, weekends and good pay? But now, as we trudge, bedraggled, in and out every day we count ourselves lucky that we can still work. We've lost many a man along the way, either in accidents or to the lung, and saying goodbye is always hard to do. Though, so is telling your wife and three children that you have pneumoconiosis, and watching their faces fall as the silent tears slip down their faces. For me, death is not what I dread, but saying goodbye to the people I love.

They say it's caused by inhalation of coal dust, something we've been very familiar with for 20 years.

I remember the first day I set off for the mines. I gently kissed my wife and newborn baby son goodbye and set off with packed lunch in hand. They weren't what I expected.

The mine shaft rockets towards the floor, leaving your stomach at the top, and when you're finally down the bottom, it's pitch black. So, you turn on your head torch and stumble off to find some one who knows what's going on. It's chaotic, dangerous and hard. There wasn't much oxygen down there.

So when we started feeling short of breath down in the mines, we dismissed it as nothing more than old age and continued on. However, when reports of coughing up black mucus and high blood pressure arrived, we knew there had to be more to the story.

Many of us made the ill fated trip to the local doctor's to be told the same heart-wrenching news. We couldn't stop working. Who would take us on? How could we support our families? Even the news that the mines were killing us didn't get us out of there. We should have left then. My friend would have had an extra couple of years to live. To see his daughter get married. All of these important events and memories stolen from us by the mines.

I never want to see my son in the mines. I never even saw the point. To create energy we could have got from the sun, earth or water. It makes me wonder about all the turning points in my life, in my fellow worker's lives.

The lung is a terrible disease, taking your strength, heart, character and old age from you. Because our mines weren't properly ventilated, I won't grow old with my wife. Cursed lung.

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