My step-mum Jane.

Jane, my step-mum, died peacefully in bed at her home a few hours ago.
I woke up to an email from her sister telling family that the end was near, and then an hour later while I was weeding outside the front door with a cat, Yujiro called me upstairs where a new e-mail had just arrived with the news.
Funny. Because Jane was a Master Weeder. She could spend hours and hours in her garden making sure it looked beautiful.

Jane was the oldest daughter of a doctor. She was the oldest sister to 3 siblings. She was a family doctor, wife, step-mum, aunty, great-aunty and god-mother. She was a friend to many, many people. She loved the Church and did a lot of work in her community and for charities across the world. She loved gardening, sewing, cooking, antiques, skiing, horseriding, writing letters, dogs, historic homes, historical books, chocolate puddings...
She married my Dad when I was a toddler, she was actually my mother's doctor and just about brought me into the world...so she has been IN my world for as long as I know.

She was a determined, practical, ultimately sensible person. Fix anything, carry anything, do anything. Knew how to keep my Dad on his toes. And out of the armchair.
She wanted to die at home. Two weeks ago she battled against doctors' and family advice to go home, got the two carers to care for her....and slipped away quietly while sleeping late Saturday night with the carers beside her and visits from her brother and sister just before.
It's the way we would ALL choose to go.

And so.
Here Yujiro has taken the day off work and he'll steer Okaasan to the hula event. We took her together yesterday to the rehearsal, it was a success...but she needed a LOT of guidance to get there with the right stuff, at the right time and place.
I'm not up to cooking lunch for Okaasan and steering her downtown again this afternoon.
I need a quiet day. Weeding would seem to be a good tribute to Jane.

Now I have no parents. All 4, mother and father, and both step-parents have now died.
I have no brothers and sisters.
My family is now this Japanese guy I met skiing, and his mother, our cats. Of course I'm part of Jane's huge family of siblings, nephews and nieces and all their children...but...it's a strange thing to sit here on a sunny morning in Japan and think. I'm 49 and I have no parents now.