ABSTRACT
Introduction In 1994 we were a long-established couple, married for 33 years with two children. Family life had always been important to us. Audrey had not worked during the children's formative years so that she could be there for them as their mother. We took family holidays together and birthdays and Christmas were the highpoints of the year marked by the presentation of gifts and a celebratory meal. Both the children were by then in their twenties and had left home to make their own way in the world but that had only changed the way the family operated: it had not changed its basic unity.
