Singing In My Bones

Rain drew me to the big window in what I still often think of as my mother's room. She lived here till 2012, when she died one month short of her 94th birthday (though it wasn't here that she died, but in her Dalkey nursing home). In her last years we'd keep the central heating on most of the day for her. Prior to that, I used set her fire every evening and light it first thing in the morning, before bringing in her breakfast: cornflakes, tea, brown bread, marmalade (and various pills).

On a day like this, cold and damp, rain rapping the panes, a fire bulging in the grate, I might ask her how her arthritis was, and she might answer:

'Oh, singing in my bones.'