It occurred to me, after I had scattered a handful of earth on the small coffin, six feet below, that my world had changed forever. Not in any startling way, for the death of my adored great-aunt, about whom I wrote briefly last August, came as no surprise. She was 101, and had entered a phase of life where her daily existence revolved around sleep punctuated by brief waking moments of lucidity. Simply and quietly, she just slipped away.
There was never a moment when she was not part of my life, and even in her later forgetfulness she never failed to remember who I was. In genetic terms she was not really my aunt at all; instead, in a very Welsh way, she had been my long-dead grandmother’s best friend. Coming as a Land Girl to work on one of the family farms, she fell in love and got married; her own relations were so far off in Inverness-shire that on her wedding day my grandfather gave her away.
