This Christmas was to be like no other for my family

‘I was stressing about the trickle away of our time together which disappeared too quickly’

- Rebecca Wilcox

IT'S not often that you know beforehand that this will be the last time you will dish out turkey and pull crackers round the festive table with your mother - but that is what this year has been for us.

You see, my mother, broadcaster and campaigner Esther Rantzen, has stage four cancer. She thought she would be dead by the Spring, but a miraculous drug meant we would have another Christmas together - a wonder we could not have imagined when she was diagnosed last January.

This Christmas was to be like no other for my family.

But once we knew it was a possibility, I was determined to make the most of it.

I ordered two turkeys. I didn't want to risk the green turkey disasters some families faced this year on Christmas morning when unwrapping their rotten birds.

Such disappointment could not be countenanced for our last Christmas.

There always seems to be one supermarket messing up the turkey orders, so we traipsed around three different stores to ensure the feast was plentiful.

The decorations went up in November and were added to and finessed right up until Mum and my sister Miriam arrived just before Christmas. Their room was festooned with holly and glitter, a large box of goodies was placed on their table, filled with everything they might need or want during their stay.

Their elderly rescue cat, who my family is horribly allergic to, was to stay in his room but was not left out of the merriment.

He was gifted his own treats including a fabulous looking scratching post that looked like an enormous palm tree.