It is September 1959 and I feel how wonderful death must be. The end of emptying pails; of getting cold; of lighting fires and carrying food, cooking it and washing up. Frozen feet; aching back, itching chest - washing feet and making beds; not having to make oneself look better than one is and not to care about what others think, do or say.

I don’t know that I want to relive any life. No life is worth the bother and to love someone is the worst of all, because they will die and leave you standing up - or will thereafter. Their affections become nothing in time and nothing is real. It is all an illusion illustrated by its uncertainty. Harry is dead and he did not want to die. Why not?

The links in my life keep being broken one after the other. I want to die in my sleep and I feel it to be the end. I can’t picture anything to like more than this earth; this air; green fields; rocks;   the sea and sky; the sun and the stars, the winding pathway and the shades of trees and birdsong. Animals are one’s only solace.  

 Pussy - my ‘Alla Pasha’ - my last long furred cat with tail erect is thirteen and I know he is old and he knows he is old. He stands and looks at me and I know what he wants. I know the whole of him. I do not want him to suffer.

I have been in pain since morning - often bad pain - but this is different. It never stops - pain, pain, pain - worse than the most violent toothache - all over me - my back, my side - aching in pain - like a tortuous agony.

Iodine does not help much and the other tablets make me worse. My body has gone and only my brain is left. I am but a shadow of myself. I laugh a lot but one knows or dreams that I am so ill. Perhaps, one day, they will realise the agony I am passing though . It is 1960 and I ought to be at rest. Why do all my relations come at night? I sit all day with eyes on the window. Then I start to ache and feel tired. I go to get in my bed and then they come. Why?