Gertie Golden Girl
Copyright© 2025 by TonySpencer
Chapter 18: Memories
Gertie remembers her life
It has been said that your life flashes before you as you near death, although how anyone can say that is what you experience when you’re too dead to tell anyone?
But there it is. Laying here in the dark, sensing that my end is near, my life has indeed flashed by me.
It wasn’t a perfect rendition of my life, there aren’t enough hours in a decade to take in everything I remember, not that my memories are perfect. For instance I have very few memories of my childhood, nor can I say I remember much about the last dozen years or so, except the highlights. I accepted my retirement in my mid-80s and I guess there are few others who can say that. And, once I relaxed all my grip on so many threads and in so much detail of my family’s lives, it was more a relief than anything else to let go.
What I can remember of my life has had its high points as well as the lowest of the low. Losing Johnnie so young was a cruel burden for such a young woman to have to carry and was undoubtedly the lowest blow of all, those brief words on the telegram seemed so cruelly casual, delivering the saddest news with stark brevity, recording the ending of the life of the man who was forever the highlight of my existence; losing both my children before they even achieved their prime and seeing my only grandchild orphaned and badly injured, only heaped on more tragedy than any person deserves to endure but on balance, I think I can leave this existence with the legacy entrusted to me intact and in the hands of someone I feel better qualified than I to carry on.
There were events in my long life that did not go so well but I believe I did my best in spite of those setbacks. My second husband Joe Alverthorpe’s estate made excellent arrangements for Alverthorpe’s two illegitimate boys, for their private schooling through to completion of their further education, and that his common-law wife Shirley Alverthorpe was settled comfortably for the rest of her life. Shirley lives in Spain and the last time I checked she was in her 80s and alive and happy. Although Shirley and I were never close, we kept in touch, And her two boys turned out handsome and successful men. I’m glad Joe never became a Judge, his judgement was clearly skewed.