Favourite son

Sleep so badly - awake from 4. It was such an emotional day. Bacon sarnie for breakfast and then up to Dave's. Slight panic as #2 son didn't fit his black trousers but luckily his dad had another pair.

Dave was very stressed, the 'don't speak to me' kind of stress. Before we left he stood beside me and texted SA, pretty insensitive really. Didn't help my stress.

The funeral was in Newmachar and it was lovely. The powerpoint played well. I stood in the front pew with my husband, probably for the last time, and cried all the way through. Dave had given me a hankie. I never seem to remember to take hankies to funerals.

My sons did really well, carrying their grandma's coffin out and then lowering it in the grave with their father and uncle and cousins. It was raining as we came out of the church and we stood and watched the coffin be put in Davie Craig's hearse but then the rain went off and we walked behind the hearse to the cemetery - a family, behind the matriach.

It was a cruel north easterly as the coffin was lowered in the grave, the plot chosen because it looks back towards Aberdeen.

The wake was good. It was great to catch up with relatives not seen since the last funeral, Dave's 5 cousins, my sons' 3 cousins and the lovely Etta, who made me cry, again. We went back to the cemetery on the way home from Meldrum to have a look at the flowers. My heels sank in the grass, Dave had, quite rightly, told me to wear my boots for the first visit.

Later in the evening I took Dave back to the Ferryhill and we talked and reminisced and remembered his mother, my belle-mere, and I cried and cried. Yes, so much emotion. He took me back to Jean's, we kissed and I said 'good-bye'. I've told him it will be for the last time. We probably won't see each other ever again, I hope we don't.

And then back at Jean's it was 2 more glasses of red and a lot more tears. Such an emotional day, but it's over now and I am so glad I could be there to be with my family and celebrate the life of that wonderful, strong, feisty, thrawn woman, Isabel, my mother-in-law. I will miss you.