Millie North

For Millie
From her funeral today
A dear lady much loved

'I spent a long time with dear Milly a few weeks ago at the Berry Hill Care Home. Just me, her & Poppy the miniature schnauzer.

It's an extraordinary ability to make you feel 12 again. My mother has it. Milly too. I walked into her room, Milly in bed, the place very quiet, & I just felt like I'd walked into Hereford Avenue. 'You've not changed,' she said, her normal opening line as I walked up to her side smiling widely as we embraced.

I sat on the floor by her bed and for the next 90 minutes or so we talked through our usual topics. The number one topic has been a shared space for some time now with Alex and Stevie. We talked through Alex's various sporting achievements, his face from a photo cheerily looking back at us. She was a very happy, proud and grateful grandma of a grandson she loved very much.

Then we talked about Stevie, us both delighted to do so, and his extraordinary meteoric career rise, me adding half truths of his alternative paths that could have taken him into high ranking Government positions and so on. Millie laughed as ever. I could always count on her good humour and grace.

We talked of the band and her and John who were super fans, though I don't know if they ever wore our t-shirts of which I've still got around 5,000 left.

She adored Steve. It was a simple heartfelt adoration for a son she happily accepted through the many fashion trends he put her through from long hair dyed as black as the blackest night to short spiky gelled up hair unwashed for days, maybe weeks. None of it really mattered to Milly because she loved him unequivocally. As his best friend I too was able to bask in some of that love from Millie too, and that night, a few weeks ago, I did so again.

Millie talked of Debra and Lisa and of how lucky she was to have them both, of how good they'd been to her. She talked of the wider family and of those who had visited and who she was looking forward to seeing.

She asked of me and all of mine in great detail. Nothing that Steve had shared with her over many hours had been forgotten.

And yet, of herself, her pain, her illness, she spoke very little. It was an unspoken pact between us, our flight to the land of joy and freedom in which she played with her loved ones.

That's where she is of course right now.

Stevie has asked me to read 'Do not go gently into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas and I shall close with that now:

'Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'