Boy - Kindergarten 1922-23 by Roald Dahl

In this chapter, Dahl'as oldest sister Astri dies because of appendicitis, an illness where the appendix gets infected. If you don't take it out quickly, you will get lots of pain, and when the appendix bursts, you will die. After Roald's sister died, his father was overcome with grief and died of pneumonia a few weeks later. Now Roald Dahl's mother had to look after 5 children in a foreign country, without any family except her children left. I imagine that life must have been very hard for the mother then, plus all the responsibilities she had to handle.