My mother died a year ago. I remember the phone call from an unknown doctor to tell me that at 83 and living in a nursing home, she had bowel cancer and about four weeks to live. I was shocked by the diagnosis - we are stroke people, not cancer! So I think I sounded 'normal' on the phone because I kept saying, 'cancer?!' as though I didn't want to believe it. But I was very keen to believe it and also experienced a 'yes' (punch the air) feeling deep down inside.

I had wished her dead for years - she had a borderline personality disorder and was extremely emotionally abusive, so bad in fact that as a frail, old lady 'caring' for my disabled, adult brother, she was dragged from the home as an involuntary psychiatric patient because the abuse of him just couldn't be ignored anymore. When she died I tried to cry but it was a very empty time, very little emotion. I was numb as so many people on here have said. Mum was so awful that no one would go to her funeral and I was so pleased to not have to organise something and get up to tell a pack of lies about her. My brother and I just put her ashes in the ground. No tears, no big emotions. I asked him if he wanted to say anything about her and he managed, 'She was a very unusual personality'.

Now a year later, I am incredibly emotional about her death and the lifetime of abuse. I grieve for the little girl who was abused. I grieve for what never was. I get confused by memories of loving, happy times - but that's the way it often is with mental illness. I feel incredibly sad, very down on myself and often deeply depressed. Her death took an immediate stress out of my life but her legacy will take a long time to get over. I know I can and will get there. I want to. On her good days she would have wanted me to as well - at least that is what I'd like to think.