“I’m tough, aren’t I?” It was almost the first wholly intelligible thing she’d said for about a week, and there was really only one possible answer. “Yes, Mum, you are.”

At the start of that week I’d had the kindly professional chat from the senior consultant. The one about “last days care”. Now it seemed those last days had got longer.

The antibiotics intended to ease the pain of her passing had apparently forestalled it. Against all odds, the sepsis everyone had expected to take her had been cured.

It was not entirely a matter for rejoicing. It was certainly not what she wanted.

The day after she went into hospital she spoke to me at length, and in detail, about what I would have to do after she died. She had thought about it, and we had talked about it, a great deal over a number of years. Now she approached it cheerfully.

Her attitude had always been logical, and consistent. As long as she was able to enjoy life, and to contribute something to others, she was glad to be alive. Once that was no longer the case, she wanted a quick and easy exit.

Which of us, in our right minds, would not want that?

We all need to face death eventually. It would do us all good – individually and as a society – if we faced it more openly before our final curtain falls. And with more of the calm, rational approach my mother showed.

She was not alone in that. A study carried out by researchers at Cambridge University shows what anyone who has spent much time among the very old already knew – that most people in their nineties are not afraid of death.

Indeed, while they might care a great deal about the manner of their dying, the idea of being dead is something many positively look forward to. And not necessarily because life has ceased to be worth living.

Until the last few unwanted, unexpected weeks, my mother generally had a good life. Yet at 94 she still looked forward to its end.

Dr Jane Fleming, who led the Cambridge study, said: “Despite the dramatic rise in the number of people living into very old age, there is far too little discussion about what the oldest old feel about the end of their lives.

“Death is clearly a part of life for people who have lived to such an old age, so the older people we interviewed were usually willing to discuss dying, a topic often avoided.”

Nearly half of all deaths in the UK are of people 85 or older – up from one in five only 25 years ago. The number of people topping 90 has tripled in 30 years. The Cambridge interviewees were all 95 or older.

One told her son, after visiting a friend with dementia: “Gordon, if I ever get like that, for goodness sake put a pillow over my head, will you?”

Which is exactly what our laws and common morals won’t let us do. Yet would the abuses really outnumber and outweigh the benefits?

I'm not sure. And I know some elderly folk who definitely think being allowed – even assisted – to die when they want would be infinitely preferable to being kept alive against their will.

Another of the Cambridge interviewees remembered her parents’ deaths. “They were alive, then they were dead, but it all went off as usual,” she said. “Nothing really dramatic or anything. Why should it be any different for me?”

One 97-year-old said: “I just say I’m the lady-in-waiting, waiting to go.”

Nearly all said that if faced with a life-threatening illness they would rather be made comfortable than simply kept alive. And most said they would rather not go into hospital. In both those respects, my mother was typical.

“Now so many more people have reached a great age before they die, it’s important we know about their views and their concerns, particularly in relation to end-of-life care,” said the study’s other author, Dr Morag Farquhar. “Having these conversations before it is too late can help ensure that an individual’s wishes, rather than going unspoken, can be heard.”

Time, perhaps, to have that conversation now. To let your doctor know the outcome. And, perhaps, to put your wishes clearly in writing, signed by independent witnesses, as my mother very sensibly did a few years ago.
​
Though she recovered from sepsis, she had a stroke while in hospital. It took away most of her ability to form intelligible words, though she went on trying. It also severely affected her ability to understand what was said to her. As far as one could tell, it did not impair her ability to think. She died at home eight weeks later, quite comfortable and clearly aware who was around her to very nearly the last.

This blog, in its original form as a newspaper column, has lost a loyal reader.

I thought I would be writing those words nine weeks ago, and in a way it would have been true. That’s when my mother stopped being able to read and discuss my pieces here. Many of which grew out of conversations I had with her.

At 94 she could still steer me towards interesting subjects and sometimes find the flaws in what I had to say about them. Until her last frustrating illness, she was good company.

Unlike her elder sister, the nuclear historian Lorna Arnold, she will not make the obituary pages of the national press. But hers was, as a friend put it to me, an engaged and interesting life.

As a war-time student evacuated to Cambridge, she studied under the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. “Under” is about right – as a woman, she was beneath his notice.

She took the title role in a university production of The Duchess of Malfi and for a moment an acting career seemed to beckon. But then came service in the London Fire Brigade, where she survived Hitler’s bombs and met my father.

Later, they both helped in the campaigns that first took both Tony Benn and Shirley Williams into Parliament. Like so many others, my mother grew disillusioned with Labour in the despicable Tony Blair years. She rejoined the party after the 2010 election defeat and was enthusiastic about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

The period she reminisced most about in her last years was the late 1950s, when she was chairman of the education committee in Yorkshire’s West Riding. She was in on the establishment of England’s first middle schools and was on the team that founded York University. Both my parents urged and aided the move to comprehensive schooling.

They were both offered safe Labour seats in Parliament. Both refused. He reckoned – rightly, I think – that he could do more good in the world as a headteacher and union official. She had four young children, including baby me.

She turned for a while to writing for children. Her one book to appear from a major publisher came out in 1958. The Apple of Healing was a magical adventure story very much in the tradition of E Nesbitt. A period piece now, perhaps, but worth a place on the shelf alongside Clive King’s Stig of the Dump or Susan Cooper’s earliest books.

After my father died in 1993 my mother returned to her first love – acting. She enrolled at drama school in her mid-70s and went on to appear in a number of small, uncredited, TV and film roles.

She was sometimes seen, never heard, as the cantankerous mistress of the household in the 2003 BBC mini-series Servants. She was in the background of many scenes in Casualty. She was the embodiment of Old Age in a documentary about Time.

With that experience behind her, she set up a small acting group at the sheltered housing block she moved to in East Anglia in her late 80s. The group’s other members were all first-time actors at ages from 70-odd to 100-plus. She was still leading and writing for them up to the eve of her last illness.

In her case the words “peacefully, at home” are literally true. I know, because I was there.

Though many people will have varied fond memories of her, there will be no funeral. She left her body to the Cambridge University anatomy department. As she put it: “It will be no use to me when I’m no longer inhabiting it. If someone else can get some use out of it, great.”

It seems a fitting end for someone who believed in science and had less and less patience with religion. And who was committed to reusing and recycling long before the rest of the world caught up.
 
 

Are we ready for a leap in the dark?
 
 
Three days from now we’ll know whether Britain, in its collective wisdom or madness, has chosen a leap into the unknown or to step back from the brink. Or, to put it another way, whether we have chosen freedom.

Whichever way you see it, it may really be – as both sides want you to believe – the most important collective decision we’ll take in our lifetimes.

Quite why we’ve been invited to take it is another matter. There is a clear majority among our elected MPs for staying in Europe. And that, constitutionally, ought to be that.

David Cameron must have been very confident he’d win to shut up the awkward customers in his own party. He must now be praying he does.

Ironically, Britain is arguably the least democratic country in Europe. Less democratic, certainly, than the EU itself.

The Brexiteers say the referendum is about “taking back control”. But whatever happens, it still won’t be you or me in control. It will still be a party – or what’s left of it – that was given total control by the votes of just 24 per cent of the electorate.

Whatever happens after Thursday, it will be interesting. But it might not be pretty.