I have only just found out that J.K. Rowling’s mum had MS and died after 10 years of suffering, apparently.
I am quite shocked. Am not a fan of HP but was reading a bit about her rags to riches story.
You learn something new every day!
"Inspiration and mother’s death
After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then-boyfriend decided to move to Manchester.[23] In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry “came fully formed” into her mind.[39] She told The Boston Globe that “I really don’t know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head.”[23][39] When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.[23][40]
In December of that year, Rowling’s mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.[23] Rowling commented, “I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter.”[21] Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing[21][41] and that she introduced much more detail about Harry’s loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.[42]"