[Anonymouse]

Originally Posted by TheNorm

Clearly in this case the treatment made a great deal of difference.

My original reply to this was a rather angry one, but as you've given me a rep (which I really should have noticed and read beforehand) I've edited - that is to say, entirely deleted - my original reply. Oops, and thanks.

I don't know if it made any difference to Mum; I hope it did. Hearing is the last sense to go, so I hope that at some deep level of which medical science knows nothing but is willing to concede exists, she knew we were there.

Actually, we think she played a sort of joke on us. To explain: we'd just decided that two of us were going to go home for a few hours while the other two stayed, then swap over. But just as we decided this, she slipped away. At the wake, one of my sisters said it was as if she'd thought to herself: 'Oh no, you don't! You're not going anywhere!' It would, I assure you, have been just like her. She had a good sense of humour...oddly enough for someone her age (72), she quite liked Bottom - especially whenever Eddie and Richie started laying into each other. Then again, so did I.

From Hole:

(in which Eddie and Richie have prayed for salvation, being trapped as they are on top of a 350-foot-high ferris wheel due to be demolished in a few hours; they've just been rescued by a huge ghostly white, presumably divine hand ...)

Eddie: Richie...although we, and indeed the BBC, respect people's right to believe in whatever they wish...(he turns to the camera)...and because we don't want to get in the s*** on this one...we don't actually believe in God, do we?

Richie: No...

(Brief pause)

Both: S***!

(The hand disappears, of course)