I would like to thank all twenty-three of you who have shared their sympathy with me so far. I had a long conversation with one of my two sisters, a great comfort. I have had scores of e-mails of sympathy, mostly from local friends and family-in-law. It is extremely touching.

As Sophie said to me today, it is not only a mother I lose but also the last attachments to my childhood. This is a trial we all have to face – unless one dies before one’s parents. We have to be brave and carry on, doing our duty with dignity and discretion, a value she tried to teach me both by word and example.

I celebrated a Requiem Mass for her this morning, as always from the Sarum missal. Feelings are not everything, but an extreme peace and calmness reigned. I remembered a time she came to my Mass in English with my father some 5 years ago when they last came to France. She devoted her whole life to other people, first for her children and her pupils, and later on for the local Women’s Institute and knitting hundreds of woollen chicken boiled egg cosies for cancer research. She had suffered many years from a bad hip and emphysema.

The funeral arrangements are not yet in place, but Sophie and I are preparing for a journey to England which will probably be next week, perhaps with my mother-in-law.

I found this old photo taken in the summer of 1966. Little me was seven years old. My mother was just 36 at the time in a very 1960’s dress. The door behind was not of a church but the front door of our house! I have spent most of this evening looking at some old Super 8 cine films my sister had recorded on DVD a couple of years ago. We had holidays in Spain, Scotland, the South Coast of England and other places in England and abroad, my father towing an enormous caravan with his mighty 12-seater Land Rover – and many walks up the Lakeland Fells with the dogs. I could go on and on and on, but I won’t.

All of us together in 1971.

This is a time for humble thanksgiving to God for his inestimable gifts and infinite love.