Too early to write this post I know, because the list of names below is only going to grow in the next couple of days.
However:-

Big thanks to Margaret, the Marie Curie nurse who sat with W through his last two nights. Who READ aloud to him during the night, who helped lay out the body and who was so supportive to me and cherub.

Big thanks to the Queensferry rent a mob, who are currently organising the funeral, and doing the dirty work like registering the death and meeting with the undertakers for me. Paul, Linda, Sarah, John, Nigel you know who you all are.

Huge thanks to PETAL who insists on continuing to walk Ned twice a day to give me more time. She's a national treasure.

SPARKLE has built a cairn at the spot on the beach where we last took W, and SENT ME A VIDEO. Which is an amazing leap forward for the un techy Sparkle. And is strangely comforting.

The Cheesetown Church Group have materialised from nowhere to send flowers, home baking, and the minister. In that order.

And the messages continue to roll in, from W's home town in NZ, Spain, Eire, from all over Scotland. The pressure is on to fix the funeral date to let so many people arrange travel.

Thanks too for all the supportive comments from my favourite bloggers.

To re-cap, (and bear with me if there is getting to be a bit of a theme on this blog), myself and other helpers are having to be trained to administer diamorphine because the district nurses can't.

The doses that W is getting for ad hoc pain relief are off the medical scale; the DNs can only draw these syringes if there are more than two of them in the room - because half this dose (now increased to 200ml....) would kill the average by-stander.

I'm explaining the irony of this to Sarah "So, basically, it's not OK for the health professionals to administer, but his ex can!"

Sounds of cackling and snickering from Cheesetown area.....

Sarah (wiping tears of laughter from her eyes): "Yeah! You got them fooled alright Macy!"

So the scan showed no clot on W's lung - it's just continued deterioration of lung and chest cavity...Okaa-a-ay someone somewhere will know if this is good or bad news. All I know is that ordinarily no one would hear they had deterioration of lung and chest cavity and go "Yippee!" So, you know, we'll just move along for now.

And on Thursday, God did his best to make amends. The sun was splitting through a clear blue sky and Sparkle has arranged a day out at the beach. As well as collecting W plus wheelchair from the hospice she has laid on sticky toffee cake, and cucumber sandwiches - with no crusts. Because, bless her, Sparkle really can do posh.
We have three dogs, a picnic, a deserted beach on the edge of Dalmeny estate and three ostensible adults pretending they are on an Enid Blyton field trip.

On Friday I have a meeting with W's palliative care team, doctors, OT, pharmacists and social workers; it won't be fun. So I'm enjoying the sun while it lasts.

"But Macy, does W have a faith? You know I offered up a mass for him last Sunday; and the kids did too...

"You know when you are a believer, you have to think of the moment of death as being one of the most glorious things. I really do believe he's going to be on the trip of a lifetime. There'll be his Maker, and all his loved ones on the other side waiting for him. I'm almost jealous....

"I did actually see my father five days after his death.... I ran past him, and there he was, and he wasn't suffering anymore. He was at peace just wearing the old brown jacket he used to wear...

"We gave him a fantastic funeral, we had all bits of different faiths, and he was cremated with all sorts of things we thought should be in with him, letters, gosh bits of dog hair....all sorts

Seriously. I am having this conversation at the side of Tesco's cold meats section.

But equally seriously I do love Sparkle - I left Tescos almost jealous of W myself.