She wasn’t afraid of dying. She knew a lot about it because she had been a nurse in a palliative care hospital when she was a working person. She said bits of your brain start to die so you don’t really know what’s going on anyway. She told Ruthy the last sense you lose is your hearing, and so you should always talk to a dying person because that may be the last link they have to this world. Likewise, you should be careful what you talk about in their room when they are on their way out, because you think they can’t hear, but they might be able to, and some people’s last moments were awful because stupid staff or family members would say mean things about them that might be their last sounds on earth. She also told Ruthy she wasn’t worried about dying because many times during her life she’d wished she was dead. She suffered badly from depression, which was considered a weakness or a lack of faith in our church, and she had often wished she could just go to sleep and never wake up.

‘Living’s not for everyone, Ruthy. Living’s not for everyone. And loneliness is everything it’s cracked up to be,’ she said. Ruthy told me she filled up many pages in her notebook with Ida Rose stories and wisdom. I was pretty sure I’d like Ida Rose too. I made a list of questions I would like to ask her and passed them on to Ruthy in the hope she might try some out on the dear old lady.

1. Isn’t it unfair that only Christadelphians will have a chance to live eternal life? And given there’s not many of us, how was God thinking we’d get around to saving everyone anyway?
2. Why does God think you should stay with your husband or wife for your whole life? What if your husband gets a weeping ulcer like King Henry VIII and it stinks constantly? What if he grows mean? What if you love animals and he won’t let you ever have any?
3. Why are some sins considered worse than others? If Jesus was without sin, but then he did a little sin, he would no longer be sinless, regardless of the size of it, so how does the order of sins work, and why isn’t there a list in the Bible of different ones with different penalties by them? I find it very hard to believe that Jesus didn’t at least take the last egg sandwich at the Sunday school lunch even if someone else would have liked it.
4. Why can’t girls do things in our church? What was God thinking when he put all that stuff in about women being quiet and covering their heads and obeying blokes? Is God a bit biased to boys, and if so, why is that?
5. What do you think would have happened if God had been a girl?
6. Can you please tell Ruthy quite a bit more about when you suffered from depression. What exactly does it look like? Could it possibly be the same as head days and cross days? Did you yell at people you loved when you had depression? Is it children’s behaviour that causes it? When you wanted to die when you had it, did you ever consider getting on a plane instead? Can children cure depression in people if they behave extremely well and refuse to have pets? If you don’t have depression now, what was the magic thing that made it go away?