Low life | 13 June 2019

As usual I go downstairs at five o’clock in the morning and into the dining room, which now serves as my mother’s bedroom. She generally sleeps fitfully until about four, punctuated by visits to the lavatory, the door of which is beside her bed, on the side she sleeps on. These visits are undertaken with the deliberation and the creeping slowness of a two-toed sloth. One wonders how she manages it.

After she wakes she lies there, praying for everybody, I expect, until this zombie appears at five. I help her on with her dressing gown and day socks and assist her on the ten-yard expedition from the bed to the recliner chair in the adjoining sitting room. Finally I draw back the curtains on the surreal, pink-tinged clouds of another June dawn.

But this morning the bed is empty. The lavatory door is firmly closed, however, and it’s safe to assume she’s in there.