As a group of people united in their grief, they needed to find some creative way of marking his death and also, most importantly, celebrating his life. Gathering together to say to themselves and each other ‘he was here, he was our friend…and we miss him’.

I felt enormous guilt for having to leave her to get back to my husband and children every day, and yet I needed the space, away from that extreme emotional pain.

Watching her lessen from the charismatic figure she had been, and that I had spent so much time with in the last few years was agony. Knowing the end was coming was unbearable.

The worst thing is that no one really knows how to respond to my grief about my mother’s death or when I mention my sister. No one asks about either of their deaths anymore.

Life doesn’t prepare you for death. Oh, you know about it in theory, but you can’t really imagine it until it happens. I’d already lost my maternal grandparents many years ago, but their passing didn’t affect me anything like as much as losing my brother and, three months later, my mum.

The word grief is too short, too simple, and too easy to say. Grief to me is guilt, regret, sudden uncontrollable weeping in Sainsburys because they have no quavers but really because I just saw an old lady who looked just like her.

The best advice I was given, looking back, was that the time between the truly horrible days would lengthen and that I would find a way to live my new life and carry the pain with me. This was indeed true. I still get days when the pain is as raw as it was all those years ago, but fortunately these days, they are few.