Old age used to scare me, but now there was something reassuring in the thought of still living with her in forty years’ time. We’d sit together, read, talk or play chess; sometimes we’d tease each other, then we’d look back again on the treasury of memories we’d amassed together. I wondered what her face would look like with wrinkles, and how she would dress in her late seventies. In that moment I realised that none of this would matter to me, and the thought of growing old no longer held any fear.
