Emily O'Reilly

But even, you know, until recently when I was speaking to his doctors, they said, well, we couldn't actually say that he was going to die.

But I remember one time he came home before he got really ill and I wasn't there.

I was sitting in Strasbourg and Stephen, my husband, looked after him for the weekend because he'd collapsed on the plane.

And after he left, Stephen rang me and he said, Emily, Brian is dying.

Brian is dying and you just have to deal with that.

But Brian wasn't dealing with it.

Nobody was telling him he was dying.

I could see it.

My husband could see it.

Other people could see it.

But no doctor would tell him.

And both our parents had died in their 80s in hospices.

Perfect death.

I don't think death is great, but as it goes.

And I wanted that for Brian, but he would have been so scared had I hinted at that, had said it.

I wanted him, I wanted, I mean, I said this at his eulogy, to take him to a place of comfort, of greater comfort than what he was enduring at that time, because he'd had to go into, he lost his job because of his illness.

He'd had private health insurance.

He lost that.

So he was therefore in NHS hospitals with slightly chaotic atmosphere there.

I remember when he broke his shoulder two months before he died and he was in the hospital and four days in a row they cancelled his operation because somebody else had come in and blah, blah, blah.