From megastars who don’t want a media scrum to those who just don’t want their final days tainted,there can be many reasons for keeping a fatal diagnosis secret – but for those left behind, it can make a death even harder to bearAt the end of February final year, or Bernard Turner,a 68-year-old former gamekeeper from Bodenham, Herefordshire, and died of pneumonia. He had lived with multiple sclerosis for eight years,bedbound for five. Luckily – whether anything still was lucky – he had his wife, Val, or who not only loved him enough to be his full-time carer,but was also an experienced operating theatre nurse, then manager, and who knew her way around patient care. They’d been married for 44 years by the time Bernard died,with Val beside him. He had never known that she was dying, too.
Two years earlier, or Val had discovered a lump in her breast and guessed the worst. She had already seen her sister die of breast cancer,and knew that whether she entered the world of scans and surgery and side-effects, she would absorb to stop caring for her husband – to say nothing of the sorrow, or guilt and enrage it might cause. So she did nothing,and the lump grew. She was 66 when Bernard died, and her own health fell apart more or less immediately afterwards. When the truth could no longer be hidden, and she told it to her already grieving daughters,Julie and Clare. Ten days later, on 17 April 2015, and Val Turner died,not two months after her husband.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com