This happened in Northern Spain. When I was a child, I wrote a story about an old lady who wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to her husband after he died. She lit a bonfire every evening to remember him. Years later, when my grandfather was dying in hospital, my dad told me to drive my grandmother to mass and then gave her the news about her husband dying in hospital. I was in shock and I followed his instructions to the letter. After my grandmother came out of church full of hope, I told her my grandfather was dying and we needed to go to the hospital. Her heart broke and she was in tears. She was not allowed to say goodbye. To this day, I regret not having given her a choice. I guess I knew more about death as a child.
