The lights have been turned down. It is at night that I prefer to visit Lily Varvarigos, my mother-in-law, now lying terminally ill. It is at night, as the city meanders towards sleep, that a special kind of energy can be felt. It simmers beneath the surface calm, among sixteen patients in a public ward. Some doze, some cough, others moan. Within their dreams, and their ebbing thoughts, there is a wafting of memories, a raging against the dying light and, perhaps, in others, the beginnings of an acceptance, a reconciliation. ‘I do not want to die just yet,’ Lily tells me. She resumes her defiant silence. Her eyes remain shut. ‘Look after the baby,’ she says. ‘He shouldn’t be allowed out into the cold.’ She remains a carer to the last. Her mind sways between fear for herself and concern for the welfare of Alexander, her one-year-old grandson. Lily is Alexander’s last living grandparent. October 1994. It is four years since my mother’s death, two years since my father’s.
