LAST time I wrote to you I said that we were optimists in my family. I told Mum that too, often, particularly when the going got tough. I was right though, wasn’t I? After all, how many times did she fall into despair over the last ten and half months with the cancer rampaging around her fragile body, before rebounding like the Phoenix rising, crying out to her readers, ‘Onwards and upwards!’

My mother desperately did not want to die. She cared about life too much to let go. She loved people and their stories and the things that they did or didn’t do. She questioned things. She physically and emotionally thrived off conversation and needed human contact. My mother was destined to be a journalist and decided this herself at the age of eight.

I have especially loved her columns over the last few weeks; the last two were particularly current and fresh. It was as though she had been reinvigorated with an urgency to warn us of the dangerous roads ahead.

Her final column railing against Brexit, what she saw as the provincial ‘ex-pats’, and the delinquencies of Boris Johnson’s government no doubt struck a chord or a nerve, depending on your viewpoint. Love her or hate her, it’s hard not to respect her conviction, her honesty, and her ability to convey it all through the written word.

READ MORE: Fidelma Cook, much-loved Herald columnist, has died

I am eternally grateful that I managed to spend 12 days at home with her at Las Molieres recently. Yes, we warred as usual, we cried, we laughed so much, and we remembered our lives together and spoke much of hers. And what a life!

She talked about her poor father, William, who died before reaching his 30th birthday of cancer after surviving the horrors of WWII. His death left her mother, Eileen, alone, a young widow, with two-year-old Fidelma in Cleveleys near Blackpool and no means to support them. The bond that mother and daughter would share became unbreakable and I have no doubt that her mother was the single most important influence on her life.

My mother told me that when she died, there hadn’t been a single day that she didn’t think about her. She said, ‘The pain recedes with time, but it is always there, and nothing is ever the same again. I’m so sorry that you will have to go through this, too, Pierce.’

Her mother took her back to the family home then in Kilkenny, Ireland. My mother only spent a small part of her childhood there but would feel profoundly Irish for the rest of her life, often writing about it. You might be surprised to know then that she never had an Irish passport and died a British citizen having been born in England.

READ MORE: Fidelma Cook: Scots journalists and writers pay tribute

In our most recent conversations in France, I tried to gently tease her history out of her. I wanted to create some semblance of order to the family stories, the things that I remembered and the things that I didn’t yet know. I wanted to hear all about her career again and I’ve since taken immense pleasure from the various tributes in the national press and by those who have contacted me to share their personal recollections.

Her column in The Herald came at the end of a long and distinguished journalistic career covering news, politics, features, wars, and the occasional celebrity for Fleet Street’s finest. I know many of you have read her columns from the very first one 15 years ago. To me, her writing has changed quite dramatically. It’s often very hard for seasoned reporters to start writing in the singular first-person as it’s been imperative in their professional work that they never share their personal opinions.

It took her a little bit of time but it’s quite clear that she relished it and, boy, did she have some opinions! On many occasions she was like a caged lion, vociferous and merciless in her critique of where the world was going wrong and all those responsible for it. In others, she showed a much softer side and opened herself up to her readers, revealing deep insecurities, vulnerabilities, and personal shortcomings. For many, this was unexpectedly riveting content and I know that she felt a great responsibility to her readers and made a concerted effort to respond to as many as possible.

Over dinner I suggested that they weren’t really columns at all, they were more like letters.

‘Letters?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Yes, I like that. If you want to know how I feel, read them.’

The last time I saw her in person I was driving out of the courtyard at Las Molieres and I stopped outside the big, glass kitchen doors. I was heading back to London and didn’t want to go. She was at her laptop, e-cigarette in hand, with a cup of instant cappuccino. She was crying and waving at me.

I put down my window and shouted through the doors, “I love you and will see you soon, Mum.’

She nodded through her tears and mouthed, ‘Me too. Now off you go.’

I know now that nothing will ever be the same again.

READ MORE: Fidelma Cook may be gone but her words will live on, by Garry Scott