In the Midst of Life

the doctor ordered cough linctus, which probably had no effect. He said, ‘There is nothing wrong. Your father’s quite healthy. He is getting old, well past his three score years and ten. He will just potter on until he fades away.’
    In those days, doctors accepted that people die of old age.
    ‘He shouldn’t be smoking that pipe,’ said my aunt.
    ‘Let him,’ replied the doctor, ‘if he enjoys it.’
    For years, my grandfather had smoked a briar pipe filled with a villainous black tobacco called Twist, which he cut up himself with a penknife. I remember poking the shards of tobacco into the bowl of the pipe and lighting a coloured spill from the fire, holding it over the bowl as he sucked hard to get the thing going. The smoke was prolific and the odour pungent (to this day I adore the smell of a man with a pipe). The doctor was right. My grandfather enjoyed it, and it certainly never did him any harm, until the day when my aunt found a large burn hole in his bed! After that he was supposed to smoke only when one of his daughters was present. I doubt if he obeyed.
    ‘He won’t eat properly.’ my aunt said. ‘I cook a nice dinner and he only picks at it.’
    So the doctor advised a pint of stout a day. My grandfather seemed to live on this, plus a bowl of bread and milk, which he made for himself each night. I wasn’t aware of any other treatments prescribed for his failing strength.
    Tragedy struck the family when my grandfather’s eldest son died at the age of forty. I remember the old man weepingat the funeral.
    ‘Why could it not have been me? My life is over. My only wish is to join my dear wife in her grave. But he, my son, he had everything to live for.’
    He was visibly smaller. It was not merely that I was growing up and getting taller. He had been a guardsman, well over six feet tall, and he shrank by several inches until we were the same height. His proud, military bearing seemed to fold in on itself, and his confident step became an old man’s shuffle.
    He felt the cold more, and needed several layers of woollies to keep him warm. He had a coal fire every day, except in the hottest weather, and always kept a good stock of fuel in the grate, but chopping wood and carrying coals became harder as the years passed, so he made lots of journeys to the coal house, carrying a little at a time, and someone else chopped the wood.
    We still went to his allotment on sunny days, he and I, me pushing the wheelbarrow, he prodding the pavement with his stick. But the weeds grew higher and higher and could not be controlled. Eventually, we dug his last crop of potatoes, and he had not the strength, nor indeed the interest, to plant any more.
    My grandfather seemed to be withdrawing into himself. He became deafer, which cut him off from conversation, but he seemed perfectly content to sit in the luxury of silence, puffing his pipe, and thinking his thoughts. Sometimes he chuckled quietly to himself. Occasionally one saw a tear in the corner of his eye, but if anyone asked why, he did not respond. He had never been a talkative man, and, as he drew towards the end of his life, speech became even more of an effort, something he did not want to be bothered with. When he had to speak, his words were slow and measured, and somewhat distant, as though his mind was a long way away, and had to be coaxed back into the world around him. Sometimes he spoke of death, saying, ‘I will soon be going to my dear wife.’ On another occasion he spoke of seeing his dead son again. He also spoke of the Angel of Death approaching. This is an old-fashioned concept, but was very real to former generations.
    It was obvious that he was fading away, although he was never particularly ill in the medical understanding of the term. Theregular pumping of his heart, which circulates the blood, conveying oxygen to all parts of the body, was becoming irregular, but he never had any pills to control the heartbeat. Without adequate oxygen supply, the internal organs gradually lose their efficiency, and eventually cease to function. The tide of his life was gently ebbing away.
    The last week or two of his life came suddenly. One day, he was pottering about as usual, and the next he couldn’t be bothered to get up. ‘Let me bide,’ he told my aunt who tried to chivvy him out of bed. He more or less stopped eating, and took only sips of fluid.
    I was nursing then, and lived about forty miles away, but I came back as often as I could to