My dear mum, who surrounded me and my family with unconditional love all her life, has gone. She was the kindest person I’ve ever met and like Laura had a beautiful open smile. Her cousin Isabella recalled: ‘She brought the sunshine into the room with her.’

I was blessed to be with her at the end. We laughed and cried together as she slipped into unconsciousness in less than an hour. My dad, sister, brother and the grandchildren formed a daisy chain of love around her while she died and in the hours after.

My sister, Andrea, and I stayed on to tend her body, to comb her hair and watch as her face seemed to become younger and younger with the hours. We felt the energy shift in the room after she left. I could feel she was free and happy.

It will take time to adjust to this new reality. We wanted her to live forever.

I’m allowing myself to mourn again, however it presents itself. At first I was shaking all night from the shock, the trapped energy and the pain.

She died from a sudden, unexpected brain stem bleed. She was admitted to hospital five days earlier for a suspected heart attack, but on that final day her heart was strong, the nurses told us at the last it was still beating very strong. She was a lion heart to the end. She looked so well that day. We thought she was going to be released any moment. ‘I’m getting a lovely rest in here,’ she joked as we sat together.

That night after she passed, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard her voice call my name. And with the dawn on the first morning without her, I walked out into my parents pretty cottage-style garden at 4am. The birds she loved were singing and the wood pigeons cooing and to my delight the beautiful peach and scarlet bearded iris (a gift from mum’s sister May) had just bloomed. The two doves mum loved (she rescued one after it broke its wing) were sitting in the big ash tree watching the house and holding their own vigil.

May your beautiful soul inspire us mum. May your beautiful presence be with us still. Your love still lives on inside us.