It's with great reluctance that I write this post. For some time now, I have avoided writing about my aunt's illness -- and her all-too-swift end. I alluded only briefly to her funeral on Friday, and I still don't think I will write anything about it. The Duffy poem will suffice in its place, I like the imagery and the phrases she uses. But just the same, I realise now that avoiding writing about these things is essentially the same as refusing to talk about them. And that's not going to do at all.

I told some of my closest friends only very brief details, in passing, of my aunt's illness. I knew that without intending any disrespect or without any malice on their parts, the details would quickly be forgotten -- and that was my intention. Only small bits of information so that I didn't have to emotionally involve myself with the subject, and so that with the bustle of our everyday lives people would forget and so nobody would ask me about it. And if nobody asked me, I wouldn't have to think about it.

It started really one idle Thursday, I think in November. The phone rang one night, and it was late enough at night so that it couldn't be good news. Nobody came to find me directly after the phone call, so although it played on my mind I knew it wasn't catastrophic news. It was when I went to say goodnight to my Dad a short while later he quietly told me that my uncle had called to say my aunt's cancer had come back. It had come back, and this time my aunt said she didn't want any treatment -- no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, instead she just wanted her peace and dignity.

I wondered at the time and in the days since the meaning of it had "come back". I didn't recall ever being told of a cancer the first time around -- if I think hard and concentrate I can just about remember a feeling sometimes of there being a subject I hadn't been included in. How much of this is a genuine memory and how much is imagined, I don't know. I have found out since the first time was eight years ago, which would have made me 19 at the time -- perhaps about the time I was living in Utah.

My aunt's decline was rapid. She was quickly admitted to hospital, and I spoke to my uncle one night when he called to leave a message for my dad about visiting times. I told him I would like to visit, too, but he politely told me not right now. I don't remember how long she was in the hospital for, life went on the same as ever for me -- the usual routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, waking up in the morning and wondering what the fuck I'm doing with my life. All my usual concerns of work and girls and life and whatever filling my head.

One evening my Dad told me that the hospital had let my aunt go home. Like an idiot, I thought this was good news. I was pleased. I knew that there'd been tests and biopsies and foolishly I hoped that there'd been some mistake -- that everything was going to be fine and my aunt had been sent home healthy and happy. Clearly not. My Dad explained that it was a matter of that there was nothing that could be done, and she'd been sent home to be more comfortable. It was then that I really knew this would be it. That it had to be it.

I didn't get to visit my aunt at home either, I can only assume that she didn't want many visitors since she'd been so against them at he hospital. My parents visited her shortly before Christmas, and were heartbroken. A stairlift was installed at her house that day so that she might make it downstairs on Christmas Day -- but apparently my aunt had expressed her doubts. Nobody knew if she meant she wouldn't be able to make it downstairs, or if she...wouldn't be around.

December 29 I spent the day in London, and all day I thought something was wrong with my parents. I had spoken to them on the phone, they'd been in Portsmouth, but the text messages asking what time I'd be home and if I needed feeding seemed...short. I can't describe it. Text messages are always short, and I am always reading emotion into emails and text messages where there is none. But just the same, I wondered if I was in some kind of trouble for being out.

I got home late, about 11pm and my Dad was sat watching TV with the cat -- a fairly normal scene. I knew immediately something was wrong. I think I asked my Dad if he was ok, perhaps he said yes, perhaps he just said he was tired. But I persisted and he told me my aunt had died that day.

Between that day and almost the day of the funeral I'd been a little disturbed by what I felt was largely a lack of emotion in me. I didn't really feel much of anything about the whole thing, which in the end I decided was because it didn't seem real -- I hadn't visited, I hadn't seen my aunt towards the end, and only when I really told myself she was gone did I feel any sadness. One night last week I can recall waking up in the night in tears, my face hot and the tears streaming down my face, like I'd woken up from a nightmare. It seems like a dream now, so I must have fallen asleep again shortly afterwards and felt completely normal the next day -- but I knew it hadn't been a nightmare that had upset me in the night.

And I guess that's all I have to say. My aunt and uncle -- both in their 70s -- had known each other since they were 14. I can't even comprehend losing someone that was such a large part of your life like that, and I think my uncle is still struggling to comprehend it himself. I don't want to write about the funeral itself. I have nothing to say there, and will probably say nothing more about any of it here. It's going in that locked box in my head, I guess until I am ready to deal with it properly.

I hid comments on the on the poem, because I didn't want to talk about the poem -- I neither wanted to talk about poetry itself, nor really the reasons behind why I had posted it. And I won't be allowing comments here, either. I do appreciate the support given by the people here that care, just as I care in turn about the "real-life" people, but I don't want to have to face the expressions of sympathy or the hugs or to have to think about it.