Just have to say this Sharon... At least you were there.

My father died some years back after a long illness, leaving my mother with suddenly no focus in her life. They were your actual devoted couple. Now I'd moved to Australia twenty years before, and although we'd been in touch, and they'd come out to see us and we'd gone back on holiday, we were separated by half a world. My mother said that she'd think about coming out to stay with us after father passed away, but I suppose we knew she would never do it.. leaving old friends etc etc..

I had a phone call from her local police early one morning to say that she'd been found dead. Apparently she'd sat down in front of the TV with a box of chocolates in her lap and just drifted off to sleep. It was two days later before her neighbours realised that she hadn't been out, and my uncle who lived nearby climbed in through an open upstairs window and found her.

It took me a couple of days to get travel arrangements made and I didn't get over there until two days after the funeral. It was while I was finalising her affairs that it finally brought it all home to me what had happened. I still deeply regret that I didn't insist on her coming to live with us, but, when I think about it, I suppose she went happy, surrounded by her own things and her memories and without pain.

Now, I don't want to go, as I keep telling myself, but if I have to, then that's the way I want. I console myself that it's not so important who is there with you at the end. More important may be who has been there during your life, and who has known you and loved you for the person you are. Then you will always live on in their memory. Everybody has had somebody to think of them with love. You may not realise it, but it's true, so Sharon, keep on living and just let people know you're there.

Sorry about that, I think I'm getting philosophical in my old age.