Outside the hospital this afternoon. Sadly not the one where grandpa is - not that we're allowed to visit, barely even able to contact by phone. Amazingly, Grandpa, at 92, has recovered from COVID after receiving significant oxygen. But sadly, his prostate cancer has metastasised. He knows. He says that when the time comes, he wants to go quietly, quickly and comfortably. ` So there I was, sitting on the wall of Bedford hospital car park, on a bleak afternoon in January, staring at two ambulances and a car on the other side of an oak tree and a straggly privet hedge. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, Billy Pilgrim time-travels to Tralfamadore. There he learns that "we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be." As Billy says: "So it goes." |