Brenda Eldridge: 4 books

Everyone has a story. It would be foolish indeed to make comparisons, for there is always someone better or worse off than oneself. However, there is a comforting and healing sense of kinship with others who have had similar experiences. Even death, that, which we call the last act of our play, does...

As a child I drove my mother to distraction with my constant question, Why? After a stream of these endless whys I can still hear her exasperated voice saying, ‘Why because.’ and I knew that was the time to stop – at least for a while. Nothing has changed. I am still asking questions. These...

In his poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, Robert Frost writes of taking the road less travelled and this making all the difference. In ‘Leisure’, W.H. Davies writes, ‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare’. Both poems have strongly influenced how I have lived my...

We were enjoying a blissful life, making the most of every day. I, the poet, was still rather bemused by the freedoms of retirement and Stephen was doing what he loves – publishing. Our idyll was rudely interrupted when we were told that Stephen had cancer. We were suddenly thrust into an unaccustomed...