I watched my son die from cancer. Here are the lessons I have learned | Life and style | The Guardian

My biggest consolation in grief and my greatest achievement in life is to have fulfilled the wishes of my child – emotional, physical, spiritual – as he approached death during the last three months after his terminal diagnosis. I do not have guilt or questions and I know full well how lucky I am to be able to say that. I have met families who did not have this and they tell me they will never recover and, knowing what DD’s good death means to me, I believe them. You might ask if my son would say the same thing about his death, were he still alive. We had many honest conversations about what was happening to him during his treatments and he knew and had accepted he was going to die; he was at the meeting when the scan showed the cancer was clearly incurable. I can only answer by describing what he achieved in those last three months and his last lucid words: “I love it here.”

I watched my son die from cancer. Here are the lessons I have learned | Life and style | The Guardian