Of smiles and stairs.

[Mouse]

Oh, it's so restful being even quieter for a change.

My daughter got married on Saturday, how she smiled, and my father came to stay.

He slept in my bed on new pillows under a new duvet and noticed the old curtains pinned in place between the view and his rare morning tea.

Usually he is attached to a rope on the stairs, so that if he falls he won't go all the way. There is no rope on my stairs. Ready to leave in the morning he descends with a rucksack on his back and crutches ensconced somehow.

He tells me how his father's father died after falling down the stairs with family photographs for visitors. And his mother's father died after a pit pony went berserk and fell down a lift shaft at the mine, crushing the miners who were descending below.

Usually he cares for his fading wife with the support of a walking frame, visiting nurses and carers help with injections and the arduous domestic tasks. He hurries back to her in his car, chauffeured by a relative who likes to drive two hundred miles, thank you, thank you, and stays at the missionary centre over there.

They say he must have fresh knees when the broken femur has mended. But it is slow. Osteoporosis has hobbled the mountaineer who was so very fast on his feet that he was always ahead on the hill.

So I have a son-in-law now. He brought me a bouquet on Sunday. Three vases full of red chrysanthemums and freesias.

[BO]

Haven't had much time to check in here of late. But, had to say I still love reading your posts, Mouse. I think you packed a whole novel into a few paragraphs with this one. Beautiful and sad--but, such is the circle of life. One life begins as another ends...