Mum collapsed at home in June 2001. Suddenly she was very weak. She couldn't eat without nausea, and speaking was an effort. The doctors thought she might have picked up a bug, and would recover with rest. But ten days later she was in hospital and paralysed with cancer.

During her last week at home, I noticed one day she was missing. I called out and searched the rooms, and then went outside. She was coming up the path by the side of the garage, carrying four large stones - completely exhausted.

I thought it was crazy. I would have moved the stones. But she had slipped out quietly on a last bid for independence.

The stones fell to the ground, and I gave her my arm to return to the house. Six months later, I saw them again on the path. I wanted to put them where she had intended, but that was lost. So I picked up the smallest stone, and it came to rest on the dressing table in my bedroom.

There it stayed for four years, dusted occasionally, until the day a weekend course required us each to bring 'an approximately grapefruit sized rock'.

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