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I remember burying a girl fourteen years of age who had died with a ruptured appendix... I buried a good many people that I knew, some of whom I loved.

I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.

My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.

I like a decent funeral, and God knows in my family we've seen enough of them. Looking through family photographs now is like watching an episode of 'Dad's Army.'

That's a very scary thing to think about, being trapped in a coffin.

My father died in France, and my sisters and I went over with my mum to bring back his body. I remember going to the funeral parlour in France and being given a laminated menu of coffins, and thinking, surely there is an ice cream at the back of here!

I saw the dead without really seeing them.

I am my heart's undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow.