The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

My father was a fairly—” she sought for the right word—“lightweight sort of person. Not a man with drive or many resources.

Visions widened, like views seen from the slopes of a painfully climbed mountain, and having come so far, it seemed ridiculous not to pause and enjoy them.

It occurred to her then that people went on living until somebody told you they were dead. Perhaps it was a pity that anybody ever told anybody anything.

Your children never stopped being children. Even when they were thirty-eight and successful career women. You could bear anything for yourself, but seeing your children hurt was unendurable.

Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn’t anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.

Self-reliance. That was the keyword, the one thing that could pull you through any crisis fate chose to hurl at you. To be yourself. Independent. Not witless. Still able to make my own decisions and plot the course of what remains of my life. I do not need my children. Knowing their faults, recognizing their shortcomings, I love them all, but I do not need them.

It was good. And nothing good is ever lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of one’s character.

The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent’s own independence.

“Absence is the wind that blows out the little candle, but fans the embers of a fire to a great blaze.

“Luxury, I think, is the total fulfilment of all five senses at once. Luxury is now. I feel warm; and, if I wish, I can reach out and touch your hand. I smell the sea and, as well, somebody inside the hotel is frying onions. Delicious. I am tasting cold beer, and I can hear gulls, and water lapping, and the fishing boat’s engine going chug-chug-chug in the most satisfactory sort of way.”

Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you’ve got.

As long as Mumma was alive, she knew that some small part of herself had remained a child, cherished and adored. Perhaps you never completely grew up until your mother died.