One final wish

Turning off the alarm, I felt a familiar ache.

‘Not again,’ I mumbled.

It was April 2020, and I’d recently started to get an agonising pain in my back.

I told myself it was nothing but as the days passed, the pain wouldn’t shift.

My four kids – Caitlan, then 17, Byron, 12, Chardanai, 10, and Lilly, 6 – did what they could to look after me.

But I felt dreadful.

I’d started vomiting, couldn’t keep any food down.

Looking in the mirror, I didn’t recognise myself I’d lost so much weight.

As a