54
Sleep had been hard to come by. After having sat up with Mark and getting to bed late, Caroline spent most of the rest of the night worrying about the boys, and how she was going to explain their grandmother’s death to them.
When Mark’s dad and brother had died, it had been expected. They’d been ill for quite some time, and the family had all had time to prepare — not that it made things any easier. In many ways, it had been harder watching them suffer for so long, going through treatment after treatment, hope after hope, then knowing the end was coming no matter what.
She couldn’t imagine what that last stage must feel like. She’d been through the others, of course, but had thankfully never had to come to terms with the knowledge — the absolute certainty — that the end was near. She
