When was the last time you changed your mind about something?

I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to understand that something inevitable is natural and can’t be too bad, but it was in my early teens, and it struck me as a sensible idea. Of course I didn’t set out to think about death in a regular way every day, but I did think about it quite often, and sure enough, it worked. Why coming to see death’s naturalness should have caused belief in an afterlife to melt away, I am unsure, but it did.

When I now think of how the uncertainty about my own future, and the proximity of death, threw me into torment, careering wildly between hope and despair, I look back in wonder at how little I thought about the effect I had on my own patients after I had spoken to them. I did worry that if my tone of voice was too pessimistic the poor patient might spend what little time they had left feeling deeply depressed, simply waiting to die. So I tried to find a balance between telling them the truth and not depriving them of hope. After a patient died, I only occasionally heard back from the family, so I had little way of knowing whether the way I had spoken to them was appropriate or not.

Retirement – I thought it was a bad idea.

July 2018, when I married my third husband, Roger, after two years of proclaiming that marriage at 76 was stupid.

I’m trying to write my will and I keep changing my mind.