Letter from dying mom returned after 15 years
Bookstore owner locates note’s recipient, whose mother died of cystic fibrosis in 1999
Knowing where you come from is important to British bookstore owner Gordon Draper, who can trace his Viking roots to Normandy in 1068.
So when a photo and letter from a dying mother to her young daughter dropped out of an old novel in his second-hand bookstore in Bishop Auckland in northern England, his first thought was how to return it.
“If your dad is reading this to you, it is because I have died and gone to heaven to live with the angels,” began the letter, neatly penned on lined paper.
“I will always be in the sky making sure you are alright and watching over you.”
The recipient, Bethany Gash, came forward last week to reclaim the missive. It had been lost after her mother, Lisa, died of cystic fibrosis in 1999 at the age of 36.
The 21-year-old reread her mother’s loving words in front of television and print media, who covered the ongoing story after a local newspaper wrote about the efforts by Draper and his friend, Albert Mark, to find her.
Gash told the local paper, the Northern Echo, that the experience was “overwhelming to be honest. I knew that the letter had gone missing, but I never knew it could be found.”
The letter was lost when Gash and her father moved after her mother died. Her father first read it to her when she was 4.
“I never ever thought I’d see it again,” she said. “And the lengths that these two gentlemen have gone to actually reunite it is absolutely amazing.”
She said a close family friend read the story about the letter online and contacted Gash, who works as a customer service adviser in Ferry Hill, a town nearby. Gash met up with Draper and Mark — and the press — on Tuesday.
When asked by a reporter how she felt about the letter’s return, Gash said, “I can’t really describe it because I thought the day would never come . . . Her memory is carrying on, not only for our family as well, but for everybody else. They can see what sort of a person she was and what family meant to her.”
Whether the letter remained hidden in a book in someone’s home for the past 15 years, or circulated in the town of 26,000, isn’t known.
Draper didn’t see the novel’s title, only the photo and letter on the floor of his shop in Bishop Auckland, which he describes as “kind of an ancient place” once ruled by the powerful bishops of Durham.
After finding the letter, Draper left his shop on Bondgate, a historic street where residents took refuge from invading Scots because of the gates at either end, and visited a business three doors down.
There he met Albert Mark, the husband of shop owner Sandra Mark. The pair decided to make a public entreaty to find the letter’s owner.
Both men were moved to tears each time they read it, Mark said.
Draper, a romantic, says the “heartwarming” tale reminds him of a novel by Catherine Cookson, the famous romance novelist who was born in the nearby town of Tyne Dock.
“When we handed the letter over . . . (Bethany) had a broad County Durham accent and that even reminded me more of Catherine Cookson,” Draper said.