I found it difficult to accept that Gail had left the house in an ambulance a couple of weeks previously and had simply never returned. I felt there should have been some last look around, a way of touching things and saying goodbye. It didn’t seem right for her to go directly from the Funeral Directors to the Crematorium so I asked for them to bring her home for the last night before the funeral. I had intended that friends and family would come round and celebrate her life with her but, for reasons to tedious to relate, nobody came.

But I wasn’t bothered. I stayed up all night with her, so I could sit and talk with her in the room for one last night and the cats could say goodbye. 

Gail comes home later today for her final night at Blagg Acres. In tribute, I’m posting the first photo I ever took of her. Interestingly, she has the ‘Lupus pose’ – one hand holding the other – years before she was diagnosed. She’s wearing the earrings I bought her for THAT Christmas. For years, this picture has sat tucked into the cover of ‘our record’ and this is the first time I’ve ever shown it to anyone. I don’t think she’d have minded, she loved her hair back then

Buzz was mummy’s boy. A cat we’d rescued as a kitten, he is just one of those characters; always jumping on things, raiding the food cupboard, hiding in places he shouldn’t be – if there’s a noise to be made and some mischief to make then Buzz is your cat. It felt wrong he was here and Gail wasn’t but cats are inscrutable things and it’s hard to say how it affected him. I’ve put one of Gail’s clothes on her side of the bed and Buzz likes to sleep on it. More than that I can’t say.

On her last night in the house, Buzz sat on her coffin and laid there all night.

It was heartbreaking.