Wheels within Wheels

I'm planning a trip to Ireland at the end of the summer and so thought I'd do a little pre travel reading. I read 'Irish Shores' by Paul Clements and then thought I'd read Dervla Murphy's autobiography 'Wheels within Wheels' which a friend loaned me. I wasn't actually going to bother reading it as, to be honest, the cover looked massively boring.

The early sections are interesting enough and I've liked her writing since I read 'Full Tilt' about 10 years ago. In the last sections the book changes completely and the last 20 pages are probably some of the most honest and heartbreakingly written I have ever read. It blew me away... the death of her lover is managed in secret amid the mounting mental and physical pressure of caring for her invalid mother. What a brave woman to be honest enough to write the following:

"As my mother drew her last breath, peace enfolded me. It was profound and healing, untinged by grief, or remorse, or guilt or loneliness... For long I had suffered with her, and made her suffer, and been made to suffer by her; and of late I had mourned for her. Now I could only rejoice... A great burden was gone, the double burdened of the another's tragedy and my own inadequacy"

And this absolutely beautifully expressed sentiment...

"Love leaves calm. Even when circumstances have given it the semblance of hate, this is so. In the tangled relationships between my parents and myself love was often abused, denied, misdirected, thwarted, exploited and outwardly debased. But it existed, and it left calm"

I read the final pages of the book with tears rolling down my face... Full Tilt and One Foot In Laos will be being revisited soon and seem even more inspiring with this insight to their amazing author.