I lost my mum to cancer as a child – the guilt was overwhelming

It had dawned on me, for the first time in my life, that one day my parents would pass away (Picture: Emma Werner)

‘Mum, I am worried you’re going to die’ 

It was Christmas 1999, and in the midst of the vicious round of chemotherapy my mother was undergoing, my parents took my sister and I to a ski resort. 

If my mum was surprised at the question her five-year-old daughter had asked, she didn’t show it.  

She’d taken ill two days earlier, soon after we arrived, and had been rushed to a doctor nearby. When she returned the following night, it had dawned on me, for the first time in my...