Each day I thought might be the last but each morning when I returned she would say to me, ‘I’m still here.’ Once when I told her, as I kissed her goodnight, that I would see her in the morning, she replied with a smile, ‘Dead or alive.’ My family were playing out an age-old scene that I suppose is rarely seen now in the modern world, where we die in impersonal hospitals or hospices, cared for by caring professionals, whose caring expressions (just like mine at work) will disappear off their faces as soon as they turn away, like the smiles of hotel receptionists.
