The background silence is deafening against the sound of your own awful struggle. The inevitable is patiently waiting in a darkened corner of the room as we sit around your bed in reluctant readiness. A noble hardy vigil but one that, unlike the others, I must confess is new to me. I had consciously avoided receiving death all my adult life and now here, my greatest champion and comfort was being dragged into the snare. The last hours were truly stifling - I wanted to scream my lungs out and tear down the walls. How could it have come to this ******* pitiful ending? But no, knowing your calm patient Christian ways the only righteous path for you my sweet, was to take your hand and whisper our last words of love to you. It was the only way for you, mother. Death is not the stuff of over-dramatised fiction, it's the quietest test we face for those we love.