Three Things About Elsie

by Joanna Cannon

“Brave is just a word we use about them to make ourselves feel better,” she said.

People need to be spoken about, I think. Their names need to be brought into conversations and mentioned in passing. Sometimes, a name is the only thing we can leave behind, and if people are afraid to use it, to hear it spoken out loud, we eventually fade away and become lost forever, just because no one ever talks about us anymore.

It’s strange, because you can put up with all manner of nonsense in your life, all sorts of sadness, and you manage to keep everything on board and march through it, then someone is kind to you and it’s the kindness that makes you cry. It’s the tiny act of goodness that opens a door somewhere and lets all the misery escape.

If we’d stopped to think when we were younger, that one day we would be back here, stooped and gray, if we’d given a moment to think how we would struggle against the wind to stay upright, and how our feet would feel afraid and uncertain; perhaps, then, we would have taken a little more time over things. We would have enjoyed the soft, easy days of childhood a little more. Arms and legs full of confidence and energy. Minds free from hesitation. Perhaps we would have danced through our youth a little more slowly.

“If you ever open a drawer, Florence. If you ever open a drawer and find something there you weren’t expecting, just remember there is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done.

“You can’t define yourself by a single moment.” Jack held my hand very tightly. I could feel him shaking. “That moment doesn’t make you who you are.” “Then what does?” I said. “Oh, Florence. Everything else,” he said. “Everything else.”