Update

Mum passed away on 26th September. That seems an age ago, as so much has passed in the meantime.

But, and this is important, I am fine. I mean, I have processed what has happened, and that Mum is gone. For good.

Most important, what made me angry when she was alive don't matter any more. I swore that she would not be laid to rest, or her remains would't be laid to rest with Dad, as she didn't deserve that.

Well, I mellowed on that, and she will be laid with Dad, so they will have eternity to talk about what has happened. That should be enough time.

I don't find myself missing her, or wishing I could have one last chat. We did that the day before she had what turned out to be her fatal heart attack. I am now at peace.

Now, I won't deny that life has been busy, and there had been little time for thought and contemplation, but the second week of the holiday, those long walks beside the Gulf of Mexico, I thought about things long and hard.

It is not a tragedy she is gone. But it is sad, sad she chose to see out her autumn years that way. But it was her choice, and she was intelligent enough to know the consequences, even if she maybe had more denial than most of us. She had had two dire warnings: a heart attack in 2011 or something, resulting in her having four stints put in. And then the massive one two years back resulting in her bypass cabbage and months of fighting off infection.

And still she did not change.

She begged her best friend for a cigarette. She ate all-butter shortbread despite being diabetic. She kidded herself she was "only just" diabetic, but the ulcers and infections on her legs never got better.

In the six weeks since she has been gone, her house has been emptied. I thought that would take months to do. It took 7 hours, though much that got thrown out I should have sorted through, but what you don't know....

And what I do have, I am scanning and digitising, and then what to do with it all? I have no one to leave the pictures to, they will sit in boxes until I pass away and someone else will have to sort it out. Or take it all to the tip. Maybe I should cut out the middle man and take it myself once I have gone through it all?

Most pictures have no writing to tell who they are. Most are of my parents or grandparents, so they are easy. The rest, who knows?

And there is the papers. Letters, cards, postcards (most unwritten on), boxes and boxes of stuff. What to do with all? It should be kept, but for who? There is no one else....

So, over Christmas and in the weeks leading up to it, I will clear stuff out. Albums and albums full of holiday snaps with Mum or Mum and Dad grinning in some sun-denched bar in a faceless hotel in former Yugoslavia or somewhere. All to go.

It will help what healing there is to do, though I feel the same. I don't feel alone or anything, I have Jools and her family. Its all I need.

Its all we all need. What does anything mean?