Now that my mourning is over it is time to write the last piece for 'Outside the Gates'.

Around about March 2007 my mother, Jessie Skeates was rushed into hospital with a severe chest infection. She was in her eightieth year and nobody thought she was going to survive very long. Her health had been getting progressively worse for the last twenty years and she was in constant pain; oesteporosis, diabetes, chronic asthma. All diseases on the increase as the population in Britain ages.

Well she did survive and was discharged nine months later. The main reason for the stay in hospital lasting nine months was being infected in hospital by the MRSA bug. She was out of hospital for a few months before being rushed in again with a severe chest infection - the flu - and again she came through and was strong enough to be discharged. But she had been severely weakened and within weeks she was back in again.

By this time the hospital was getting a bit fed up with my Mum and only kept her in for a few weeks before discharging her to a nursing home where she was for a week before suffering a massive heart attack and from which she finally died.

I posted a notice of her death to this site on 01.07.08 and which came down the next day. It certainly attracted some attention in that short time. A comment was sent to a piece I had written over 18 months before about a friend of mine whose 20 year commemoration of his death I had attended. The piece was very critical of Mark's mother who I met at his hospital bedside. The comment was from someone claiming to be Mark's brother, though he never mentioned to me that he had a brother.

I have no argument with the description of Mark's mother in the comment. She may very well be like that in other circumstances, but the description I gave is accurate for the one time I met her. The timing of the comment though confirms the vindictiveness which Mark was trying to leave behind when he moved to London.

As I intimated in the opening line of this short article, this is the last posting to this site. It will now wither on the vine, as they say.

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