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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Helen as told to Katie Cunningham

Kindness of strangers: The day of my mum’s funeral, the saleswoman at the stationery store made me feel less alone

A woman helps another woman look at cards in a store.

Mum’s disease progressed slowly at first, and then in a really big rush. After years of battling early onset Parkinson’s, in 2015 we were suddenly told she only had six months left.

I was living in Brisbane, Australia, and Mum was in a care home 600km away in Taree, so I began flying down every second weekend to visit. At the time, it was still common to print out your boarding pass – or at least, it was for me; I was a bit late to the tech game.

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