You never know the minute . . . .

I've got an auntie, Auntie M, who is 89. She was 'born on the day of the Great Armistice' as it says in the family Bible and it looks as if she's on her way to meet her maker. She went into hospital about ten days ago with pneumonia, septicaemia in her blood, a raging chest infection and a temperature of a hundred and five. Not a bad collection of things by anybody's standard. Anyway, she's fought her way through the pneumonia and the septicaemia and her temperature is down, but she can't move much, can't speak, isn't often conscious or cognisant and still needs oxygen and a glucose drip. Hard as nails, but, as 89, I think she's had enough.

She's the last of her generation on all sides of the family and she'll take with her a lot of family history. There are only three of us left who can remember anything about the family and knew anyone from before the war. To paraphrase a line from a film, " the worrying thing about being one of the 'few' is how we keep getting fewer' . . . .

Back later.

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