was, rather, the last, supreme luxury; a luxury she had waited all her life to indulge. There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full. She had, after all, nothing else to do. For the first time in her life – no, for the first time since her marriage – she had nothing else to do. She could lie back against death and examine life.
This sense of being an older woman sounds lovely, tbh. And this image of laying against death, like a cradling chair or even an embracing friend.... I would want to feel this way.
