She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me by Brockes Emma

Author:Brockes, Emma [Brockes, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Adult, Biography
ISBN: 9781101617854
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-05-16T06:00:00+00:00

I want to take this last chance to wish you a pleasant journey and all the success of the future and I wish to thank you very clearly for all that you did and sacrificed for our sakes, whilst times were hard. Those are things of the past, but we will always remember and appreciate all that you did for us, the same way a child will come to its senses at some time, and start being thankful for all its mother has done. This has been a dream of yours for a long time and I’m so glad for your sake that it is actually coming true. We all hope you have a wonderful time. God bless you, Paul,

Tony.

The second arrived in the last year of my mother’s life. “I’ve had a letter from my brother Tony,” she said when I walked in the door. It was open on the kitchen table. I picked it up and turned it over. “Where does it start?”

“It just starts.” She giggled. “It’s very peculiar. Read it to me.”

Finding a suitably ridiculous voice, I began reading: “And God commanded the sun to rise and it sent out its searching rays . . .” I looked up.

“I told you,” said my mother.

I continued, “. . . and lo, the daylight revealed a pathetic conglomerate of rabble sheltering under a lone thorn tree.” My mother giggled again.

“Is that you, the pathetic conglomerate?”

“Who knows. It’s very peculiar. He seems to have found the Lord.”

I read on. “From the midst of them stood up a young maiden, tall and beautiful, she stretched and yawned, dusting herself off after a troublesome night. But nought”—I snorted—“but nought could daunt the courage of this young maiden. She turned smiling at our mother and said—” I paused.

“Go on.”

“And said, ‘We may be poor but we sure see life.’”

My mother grinned rather fixedly.

I continued: “Though life dealt you many challenges and injustices not once did I detect any malice or selfishness. You remind me of the Bible’s Ruth.”

Now she snorted, softly.

“My dearest sister,” I read. “Thank you for not deserting us all when we were little. You are—”

In alarm I scanned quickly down the letter.

“Go on.”

“You are an old iron horse, a strong tower to which we could run and hide. Be not afraid, my sister. We shall not die but at the sound of the last trumpet soon the dead in Christ will rise. Be vigorous and be courageous. ‘You are precious to me says the Lord, I have called you by name and you are mine.’ Do not underestimate the power of God or for a single moment think that he does not know or care. ‘I know,’ says the Lord, ‘I know.’ And we love you too. Tony.”

Standing in our atheists’ kitchen, I started to cry. My mother looked off into space. “Shame, Tony,” she said. “He always was full of nonsense.”

“I’m divorced from Liz, you know that?” says my uncle down the phone.

“I know.”

“She left me for a better man.

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