Writing about death and family then it happens for real

I was just writing about the subject of writing about death when the call came. My father and I had said goodbye to my step mother twice yesterday but by the afternoon he was not sure if she took it in. By 11 PM she was unconscious and so today my father, sister N and I just sat in Shipston joking and laughing about times gone by and the political pantomime and not mentioning what was going on fifteen miles away in Myton.

There my heroic step siblings sat with their mother as they had done since Monday. And then I got a call from step brother T. He was audibly in tears. I walked to my father who said something about "that was the call". It was. The Wine Society chose today of all days to drop off a case. By four, it was agreed that it was an exceptional occasion and we opened the first bottle. Good news: sister N is off the booze - more for Dad and I. We made a few calls to family friends and relatives.

In a small town like Shipston everyone knows everything. I was making one call in front of the house when a lady walked by. She seemed to know who I was and asked about my step mum. I told her the news and got a big hug. I asked her to let the neighbours know and as I walked to the Co-Op just now I was greeted many times by folks expressing sympathy. The woman who had kept my father going for 28 years, for which I shall always be grateful, was well loved here.

My step mother is my father's second cousin. As a post graduate at Oxford my father made her welcome when she went up as an undergraduate by taking her to the opera. Twenty years later my father was a widower, my step mother divorced and both attended the wedding of our cousin Penelope. My father always used to run an unofficial book at family weddings on who would be next to get hitched and boy how I wish I had put £100 on the 1,000-1 shot that was my father himself. For within a few months after a hot date at the opera the two were engaged.

As we killed time at the hospice this week my step siblings recounted the first time my father stayed over with their mother. None of us knew how happy they would make each other, how lucky my father was to have met my step mother. She has kept him going for 28 years in a way no-one else could have.

I am pretty sure that should my own death be anything other than instantaneous I shall not take the opportunity to write about it. I will not even allow the young blond Swedish nurses that I plan to hire to look after me in the last stretch to write about it. Not even a tweet. I know that in the modern world there is a fashion for describing one's encounter with a terminal illness in every detail but I think the horror of such an encounter is best kept to yourself and those who have to know. It is partly for that reason that I have mentioned only en passant the illnesses of my step mother ( four and a half years) and my father ( 16 months). It is also because though I write about my life and mention their odd views on a range of matters they have as much right to privacy as anyone else.

I did notice that my step sister T had mentioned their condition on her blog some months ago quite explicitly and I suppose it is not in that sense anything that can be described as a secret.

For now my father and I watch Endeavour, then it will be the news and then bed for him and some therapeutic writing for me. I think we have the next couple of weeks planned -Dad and I are not great ones for hugging, downloading and opening up. It is simpler for now to stick to Endeavour and the Labour pantomime and not to talk about what has just happened. And in terms of writing that is also a policy that I shall be following.