Mums Mum

I can't really think of much worse than a parent burying their own child. A few years later I was to be at the birth of a baby who would have been my second daughter, Susanne, still born at full term and with a strong heart beat as the labour pains started but most of the final moments of birth carried through knowing the heart had stopped. Cuddling the naked baby was hard enough and then burying the ashes was traumatic.

But for my Gran, Adele who had been through so much with her daughter, it was an unbelievable time. Constantly she asked why not her? They had together survived so much hardship.

Mums German family had arrived by car - Mother Adele, her slightly younger brother Georg himself an obstetrician and faced constantly with female cancer deaths and Jochen officially her 12 years younger half-brother who was just as close to her as Georg. They were a close knitted family, Adele the strong matriarch, and she loved and respected my father just as much as one of her own children.

Here we are sitting on the patio outside the kitchen window, all designed by my mother a few years earlier when we bought the run-down 15th-century farmhouse. The kitchen was the former dairy parlour.

L to right: Gran Adele, my father, uncle Georg, my then wife Chris and me. Jochen took the photo.

Looks like an ordinary, pleasant family gathering. It wasn't. The next day was the funeral service at Quidenham monastery and then the burial at Old Buckenham church. We had so many people attend. I don't remember much but two families from the village were a particular source of strength - Barbara and Robert Gilmour, a wonderful farming family and the other a seemingly brash ex-US Air Force officer Bill Wuest who really did shine that day.