Nanny

Nanny's in hospital. Moonface's mother, Nanny, Midge, Margery, call her what you will. She's 87 and frail. Her hands are arthritic and she has had difficulty walking; last Saturday (while I was away) she fell at home and broke her hip. Fortunately one of her grandsons found her and called the ambulance to accompany her to hospital. She's had the operation to repair her old bones so she's now slowly recovering.

The poor old thing. She's probably not eating enough for her, and has difficulty raising her water-glass to her lips to drink from it. Her face is scabby and mottled with sun-spots, some of which we assume are cancerous. She's thin. Her mind is wandering: when I called in to see her yesterday she told me that Moonface has visited when I knew that she hadn't, and Midge thought that another relative had been three times although that woman hadn't been at all. She screams though her physiotherapy.

What can we do? Nothing. Just visit as often as we can and hope for the best resolution. I don't know whether that's a heart attack in her sleep or a full recovery. Whichever she wants, I guess.

Nanny's hospital ward is full of similar old ladies, sitting resignedly and uncomprehendingly by their beds, slack-jawed and vacant. It's sad. And now we will remember them like this rather than as their vibrant youths or healthy middle-ages. It was the same for Moonface's father, whom I now remember as a yellow hollowed cadaver lying in his hospital bed after his mercifully brief final illness, rather that the grumpy old man that we knew for so many years.

Give me the gift of a swift, painless and clean death, please. And not for a while yet. And grant Midge what she wants.