I HAVE very fond memories of my grandmother.

She’d had a hard life. Her husband died in a Nazi concentration camp and she said farewell to her only son who left Austria aged 12 on the last Kindertransport trains.

9,000 refugee children arrived here; one-and-a-half million weren’t so lucky. Neither knew whether the other had survived until they were reunited a year later.

My memories of her were when she was in her 80s. She still had a thick German accent, sounding as if she’d just stepped off a boat and she cooked cakes and made salads and schnitzel as only the Viennese can. She found solace and companionship in the Lutheran Church, worried continually about any and everything and was completely selfdeprecating.

At Christmas she would give each of her grandchildren two envelopes. One contained a generous cheque for our Christmas present (which we knew that as a pensioner she couldn’t afford) and the other, an undated cheque for the same amount that she told us was our ‘birthday present, in case I’m not here any longer to give it to you.’ She wanted to do her best for the family that at one time, she thought she might never have.

I thought of her twice this week.

Once, on Friday, when parliament overwhelmingly rejected the Assisted Dying Bill. One MP reported that he had received more correspondence about this Bill than any other. I was moved by the passion and conviction of the debate.

I found the arguments on both sides convincing – that individuals should be given the respect, right and dignity to choose whether to end their lives for themselves – and that society should never condone one person helping another to take their life and that it would put those who imagined that they were a burden others under intolerable pressure. I am sure my grandmother felt she was a burden to us and that she could better provide for us if her life ended before she spent her savings on a care home. I can’t help feeling that had this bill been law in her lifetime it would have given her further worry.

I thought of her for the second time when I read Revd John Proctor’s letter in this paper urging us in Salisbury to offer help to refugees from Syria. Who knows what scars those forced to flee will carry with them when they arrive here?

Our government’s offer to accommodate 20,000 refugees is also a drop in today’s ocean of need. But for those who come here – it will show them they are not beyond hope and people still care. The whole debate has become mired in politics but if we are going to do it, let’s do it willingly, and welcome them with generosity and open hearts.

That will be as important as any of the practical help Alabaré is offering.