This site is kept in loving memory of Trish Reske, who passed in October of 2021.
Trish was a writer - this site captures a bit of her incredible sense of humor.
You can read Trish's full obituary here.

A Pilgrim’s Homecoming

The storm that had blown for days quickly intensified through the night. The Mayflower, an ill-suited ship for such adverse conditions, creaked and groaned amidst the westerly gales and eight-foot seas. Dorothy barely noticed the terror in her fellow passenger’s cries. Her mind – her heart- was 2,500 nautical miles to the East, where she had left her baby John, her precious only son of just three years, and boarded this God-forsaken boat against every ounce of her will.

“The Lord deliver us and save us!” cried a man, whose voice she recognized as Captain Villers. Not one to call on the Almighty’s name without great trepidation, she saw a raw terror in his eyes, as one who’d gone mad with fear.

The Mayflower was ill-prepared to take on the terrors of the high seas, let alone the hopes, dreams and pressing fears of its 102 passengers.  The merchant vessel was built for trade, with dimensions of 90 ft in length, a keel of 27 feet, a beam of 26 feet, and a hold of just 11 feet. She was square, fat, and never intended for human passengers; rather, her purpose was for trading, no more, and far less.

“God help us,” Dorothy replied softly.  The wife of William Bradford, she had nothing more she could say. William was the leader of the brethren of the Pilgrims, set in their hearts as Moses had to inherit a promised land, a place where they could freely worship as their hearts burned to.

The small ship rose and plummeted with the onslaught of rolling, crashing waves. Everyone onboard expected the vessel to crack at any moment, flailing them all to the sucking blackness of the raging seas.

“Dorothy, please help me,” pleaded Elizabeth, fully pregnant with her first child. She was like an orphan, alone with only the other women for comfort. Dorothy immediately and instinctively opened her arms and cradled her as the ship plunged down – then up – through the walls of water. She felt the taut womb of her sister, and a yearning for her own son tore at her heart.

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John had been everything she had hoped for in a first child. Sweet, round cherry cheeks, plump ivory thighs, and green-blue eyes that danced with glee, he filled her heart and her days. She remembered the day he was born like no other. Her husband was nearby, but not allowed in the birthing room; instead she had labored with the women in her circle, completely afraid. They knew what she didn’t: that the beginning of her little boy’s life would erase hours of pain and uncertainty in a brief instant.

They named him John, after the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” From the moment he entered the world, he stole his mother’s heart. Dorothy loved him completely, unreservedly.

But she had found herself in the midst of religious persecution. Her husband, William, from Leyden in the Netherlands, was driven by the charismatic John Robinson, the leader of their church to flee persecution and make a new home overseas, where they would be free to worship far from Catholic Spain.

It came at a high cost. The ship they commissioned could not carry the entire congregation of believers to the “New England.” Choices needed to be made.

Dorothy never had a say. It was decided that children under the age of 10 would not survive the trip, and so would be kept with relatives until a second voyage was planned. Dorothy wept silently, rocking her dearest baby John, just three, in her lap. To be separated from him, for a moment, let alone months, maybe years, was the epitome of incomprehensible sorrow.

And yet, she followed her husband, her heart dead with submission. She boarded the Mayflower alone, without her only son, an action she would never forgive herself for.

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Elizabeth squirmed, and then rested, in Dorothy’s arms. It would be just two more days before the seas would subside, and she would give birth to a son. She named him Oceanus, in respect and tribute for the sea. Dorothy wept with joy and loss, wondering if Oceanus would meet a worse fate than John, although she could not imagine what that would be. At least he was at his mother’s breast, in the ship, at this moment.

The gale had passed, and the Mayflower persisted. Captain Villars wrote of the great tranquility that followed — a sure sign that God was delivering the Pilgrims from persecution to the Promised Land. The Gulf Stream flowed in from the south, gently caressing the Mayflower along easterly, albeit many miles north of their intended destination of the Hudson River.

For Dorothy, there was no difference. Each day was one day further from her baby John. She could not show this, yet her single, complete devotion weighed heavy in her heart.

Oceanus thrived, despite the dire circumstances. Mary Allenton, another expectant mother, was not so fortunate. The gale and high seas quickly and mercilessly exacted her child from her, resulting in a stillborn birth – a Son -at Plimouth Harbor. She hid her face for three days, unable to receive even a woman’s comfort. Sarah Eaton, another new mother who had managed to bring her suckling child of just three months onboard, succumbed the first winter on land at Plimouth. Her baby died with her.

As the Mayflower decided on its final destination of Plimouth, Dorothy faithfully cared for these and other women. She cleaned their baby’s rags; she fed them her food; she acted as their mother when she was just a young mother herself. Mary’s dead baby dealt an exceptional blow. She enveloped herself in her dear sister’s loss. How could she abandon her John, fully healthy, fully alive, crying for her, when this woman who had no choice lost the most precious thing through no action of her own?

She began to hate William, to hate the religious cause that cost her her sanity, her humanity. They were anchored at Plimouth, and the men were talking about sending out exploration groups to ascertain a settlement site. All Dorothy knew was she couldn’t settle. She had never really set foot on the Mayflower from the beginning.

So it seemed perfectly natural, on December 7, 1620, a grey, frigid morning in New England, that Dorothy would quietly and resolutely step over the starboard edge of the Mayflower, her heart facing eastward toward her son, only to drown in the cold, deep waters of the Cape Cod Bay.

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Shortly after Dorothy’s death, which William Bradford never mentioned in his journal, he wrote these words:

“It is true, indeed, ye affections & love of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had litle power to help them, or them selves; and how ye case stode betweene them & ye marchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could not sustaine them but ye spirite of God & his grace? May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie…

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