One morning in February 2021, I was woken by a WeChat call from my brother in China. Mum had died the previous night, he told me. I wasn’t shocked to hear about Mum’s death – she had been very ill for a couple of years.
In fact, for months before she died, our weekly WeChat exchanges mostly took the form of my simply looking at her on the screen, noticing subtle signs of deterioration each time. In a way, these online occasions were more for my benefit than hers. She was progressively unable to recognise or communicate with me.
