Paul’s tears I MISS MUM EVERY DAY

‘We had been a team for life. She had cared for me and I for her... I knew how precious this time was now’

Mum has been dead for almost four years now. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her. She was my best friend, greatest cheerleader and illustrator. She would have loved scribbling her bizarre illustrations for this book and as usual she would be so proud of me.

In the months leading up to my mother’s death, she had grown increasingly weak. Her old frame was fighting multiple threats and it was proving impossible to balance her medications. In the weeks before her death, she had to be moved to a new rest home in South Auckland that was better equipped to help her, and she was spending more time at Auckland Hospital. She was constantly hallucinating and disturbed.

I was called to the hospital about two weeks before Mum’s death. My mother had little time left. Bella was with her, and other very close family arrived. She was