Letters to my sons.

Dear Son,

tt is two weeks ago today that your Grandmother, my mother, died.

The two of you only met once, on her birthday this year, 30th July 2005. Although you both had chats on the phone – you would gurgle, make your high-pitched bird noises and laugh while Grandma talked.

Your grandmother was a fighter son, since I was nine years old she was having something removed, altered or irradiated. She fought cancer time after time and by the time of her birthday this year had just got her hair back from the chemotherapy she was having.

Living with her death has been something I have been doing since I was eleven years old and in the end it wasn’t the cancer that got her. Despite it’s best efforts over the last 24 years it was her heart that gave out in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospital.

You have kept me going this past two weeks with your spontaneous smiles. It’s as if you can sense the grief and unhappiness around you. You gorgeous smile reminds me that life goes on, that my mother wanted people to be happy and that you are my happiness. You were there to give me strength along with your mother at every turn. Even now as I’m writing this you are on the bed next to me laughing and farting and lightening my mood.

I’m sure I will continue to cry for my mother for many years to come and I will miss her and the regular chats we used to have as she listened to my problems and offered advice. She told me on more than one occasion that life was for the living and the dead could look after themselves. With that it mind we have to look after your grand dad who is now all on his own.

The one thing that I have learnt from this whole episode is never to put things off for the future if can do them now. The future may never happen.

I have created a web site dedicated to your grandmother : audrey.caudle.me.uk.