The shades of the small room with the parking lot view were drawn and the stale air of the nursing home stopped me in my tracks at the doorway. I looked at the familiar knickknacks that godmother Martha has chosen to surround herself with here in what is sure to be the last place she lives. I think perhaps it is a blessing that she has lost her sight. At least she can’t see how the dim light in this place renders the remnants of her many past homes faded, tatty and lifeless.

My eyes shift to Martha in her chair. At 86 she has become frail and brittle. The arthritis she has struggled with for half a century has immobilised her body and put permanent deep, dark circles of pain under her eyes. Sitting motionless in her chair, her short shock of white hair is combed back with a pouf at the front. It looks a little like a greaser haircut or a waterfall in the vernacular of the fifties. To complete the look she is wearing a pair of wrap around sun glasses that someone has brought for her to help keep the whispery shadows she still sees to a minimum.

As I bend over to give her a hug I say, “Gee Martha, you look pretty cool with your shades and slicked back hair.”
Martha replies in her lingering Lancashire accent, “Oh, yes the aids have been telling me I look like Elvis. I told them there is only one difference between me and Elvis.”
‘What’s that, Martha?”
“I’m not dead yet.”