Peter Hitchens on Christopher Hitchens

I am surprised Peter Hitchens, an evangelical Christian, would weigh in on Day One of the death of his famous atheist brother, Christopher Hitchens. In the reflection, Peter wandered from their stormy but mostly pacified and workable relationship to the courage of his brother, a courage Peter admired.

Here are some of Peter’s words:

There, he suggested, we could go through his bookshelves, as there were some books and other possessions he wanted me to have. I couldn’t have cared less about these things, but I had greatly hoped to have that conversation, which would have been a particularly good way of saying farewell.

But alas, it never happened. He never went home and now never will. Never, there it is, that inflexible word that trails close behind that other non-negotiable syllable, death. Even so, we did what we could in Houston, as the doctors, the nurses, the cleaners, and who knows who else, bustled in and out….

He would always rather fight than give way, not for its own sake but because it came naturally to him. Like me, he was small for his age during his entire childhood and I have another memory of him, white-faced, slight and thin as we all were in those more austere times, furious, standing up to some bully or other in the playground of a school we attended at the same time.