Close The Door Softly Behind You

All Books are second hand
Emmaleen Kriel
9781770070394

Emmaleen Kriel is the mother of seven children, so caring for others comes naturally. When her husband dies, leaving her in an empty nest and precarious financial position, Emma is compelled to sell her caring skills in the United Kingdom.

"I sometimes wonder what caring is all about. As I see it, I care for cash. Does seem funny - how can you care for someone and be paid for it? Rather like making love and being paid for it: doesn't work."

But Emma finds that her paid caring brings comfort and joy into the lives of those she works for (although, for her, the three-year stint is not without its trials, homesickness and yearnings). She helps a nervous first-time mother, a feisty old woman with Alzheimer's and a professor with Parkinson's who just wants to "cuddle"; and cooks and cleans for a family of minor aristocrats at their villa in France, an old Lady's two overweight Corgis, and ex-Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath. During this time she comforts herself with letters home to her grown brood and their young families. She also learns what it means to work in service, at last confronting those maids who worked for her in South Africa in an open letter to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Join this middle-aged, slightly eccentric woman on this journey taken later in life where, in trying to teach her children independence, she discovers her own.