Thank you for your very thoughtful comment, Chris. I appreciate it!

I took two years out of my work to become a full time helper for my mother in 2018/19. Your first question – do you want to live? – was a definitive NO from my mother (she was 90 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer). To be able to speak to her about that decision made it much easier to talk about questions 2 and 3, and to bring the rest of the family to understand those difficult conversations.

In the end my mother died as she wished to – with some peace and tranquility, at home, with minimal medical intervention. As an ex-serviceman, I think that training helped me to deal with the day to day commitment that needed to be undertaken, but reading your blog posts over the past few years strengthened my mind and heart to see through those last few months. I would also add that there is much to be said for the sense of belonging that the armed forces gives you. When I cried, I cried on the shoulders of my ex-RAF friends, not my family. I had not seen some of them for 30 years, but they just ‘get it’.

On a lighter note, my mother was born in 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland, so she was ten years old when the Second World War broke out. One day during her illness, she commented to a nurse that she really wanted a cigarette. The nurse asked ‘when did you start smoking?’ She replied ‘when Hitler started bombing the dockyards!’ 🙂

Thank you for your inspiring posts

Chris