A Matter of Time

In hospital at 98½, she was hardly there

When the doctor, younger than either of us,

Took us aside and spoke quietly in an attempt to reassure.

We were old enough to have seen many deaths,

And this one was not news, not sudden

Like my mother’s, not too far away

Like her daughter’s father’s – we were prepared

to understand “a matter of time” and “terminal care”.

 

I asked about the drugs I knew she hated,

That so confused her she couldn’t ask to have them stopped.

We’d watched her growing blinder, deafer, dumb –

A suspended animation of the mind,

As all was now suspended, waiting

For the moment to stop.

 

They sent her ‘home’ – the home where strangers loved her

despite her snappishness – and there

she started her last days with a new bed,

an almost clean prescription sheet, and sleep.

She hardly woke for her grandchildren;

she hardly spoke to her great-grandchildren;

she seemed to know the priest had come

and slept more easily.

 

To wake

to sending photographs and messages on mobile phones;

to recording a thankyou on video for Australia;

to reminiscences and jokes and so much talk we visited for hours.

 

She chocolate-caked her way to 99 and Christmas,

refused to miss the party at 100, charmed by the fuss,

balloons, the mayor, and Elvis (redivivus), with raised eyes

and a snort for the ‘telegram’ she never wanted.

 

And now, she winds down in her own time, having had

the chance to say the things she felt important,

her mind her own not hostage to the fortunes

of prescibed senescence, while we are wondering what to do:

in a matter of days now she will be 102.