Siobhan's Miracle - They Told Us She Had Weeks to Live. Then the Most Amazing Miracle Happened. Ellen & Derek Jameson

have cancer sometimes do die, but that even death is not the end of life. Like her grandmother, who died in 1998, she still will be able to talk to me when I’m up in heaven and visit my grave.

       There is only one area in which I haven’t been honest. I have pretended to her that I’m not frightened of dying. She is not frightened of dying – she believes it is something we all welcome and embrace.

       My mother lived with us for eighteen months before she died. Constance understands that now nanny is in heaven she doesn’t come back to visit and we can’t pop up to visit her, though we do go and put flowers on her grave and talk to her then.

       Mum has been gone long enough now for Constance to be aware that death does indeed represent a kind of loss. And I think she expresses that most often by saying that if I die she wants to go with me – she doesn’t want to stay behind. I don’t know how she will cope if my illness gets worse.

       She’s a sweet, caring child, a very good child. Not a day passes when she doesn’t say, ‘Let me kiss your scars, Mummy. Let me see if I can make it better.’ She arranges cushions for me and tells Oscar, ‘Don’t jump on Mummy, her back hurts.’ She is considerate to her father, Peter, and gives him extra time to get on with all the things he has to do while I am ill.

      The hardest thing I find is when she’s showing a different side of her childish personality and being difficult and crying and whingeing. I have to make a conscious effort not to pull the sickness card and say, ‘Let Mummy rest.’ I endeavour not to take advantage of her sweet nature.

       Oscar, I think, suffers a lot when I’m absent. He seems to know intuitively that I’m not well. He’s a sunny little boy and I can’t imagine how his little mind will adjust if one day he does not see me again. He’s very attached to his father and very attached to Constance. Though I know he will never be able to get over the death of his mother, in a way he will come to terms with it.

       One of the reasons for choosing his guardians, Liane Jones and Jamie Buxton, is because Jamie lost both his parents in childhood and he will understand some of the issues that Oscar will need to face and hopefully be able to help him. At least he will have some experience to share with him that other people may not have been able to express.

       We have also done some things in case I die that I never thought we would – like having a family portrait taken at Christmas in the studio. My parents and grandparents always had family portraits done in a studio.

      I’ve also been trying to record, with varying degrees of success, a tape of me reading the two children a bedtime story so that they could listen to my voice, though I did say to Peter it could be more upsetting than comforting. He would have to be the judge of that should the time come when I’m not here.

       The way I discipline the children has been governed by the uncertainty of my illness. Both Peter and I try not to reprimand them in any way that makes them feel they are not living up to our expectations of them.

       We try to spell out how much we care for them and leave them with lots of positive affirmations of praise so that, should they lose me, then hopefully they will not be left with the thought that it’s some kind of punishment.

      They are very happy children. Any difficulties or uncertainties they may have in their world are concerned with the environment outside the home, at school or with friends, not with any doubts about whether their parents love them.