Keeping a lid on it

I have been 'keeping a lid on it' since Saturday morning... but I'm now so all over the place I need to write this down. My sister died suddenly in the early hours of Saturday morning. She was not a young woman and she hadn't been suffering from cancer so I feel unqualified to ask for sympathy when so many of you are suffering. She was 76, very fit for her age, walked everywhere, worked in a charity shop and had hardly had a day of illness until two weeks ago. She was diagnosed with suspected gastric flu which turned out to be a burst appendix. She underwent surgery on Friday to remove all the infected tissue and the operation was deemed to be successful... but then she had a heart attack and died. We are all left reeling by the suddenness of the events and I am particularly sad because I felt our relationship was not as good as it should have been. She was sixteen years old when I was born and left home shortly afterwards to enter a scheme training orthopedic nurses. We never lived in the same house and she moved hundreds of miles away. We met only for the odd weekend or holiday. She was always the 'grown-up' and I was always the child. We always kept contact by telephone but it is never the same as sharing experiences. Since the death of her husband two years ago we had become a little closer and we visited more frequently. She was due to spend a week with me in May and I had planned lots of fun 'outings'. We had a shared interest in history and had trailed around loads of stately homes and castles. Now... we never will again... it's all over. Please forgive me if I duck out of answering other folk's blogs for a while... until I get my head together. KateG