" Amid my
work in London, I used to receive letters from my friends, letters
telling me of the march of the disease, and with each letter death
grew more and more realisable until her death seemed to stand in
person before me. It could not be much longer delayed, and the letter
came which told me that "Mother was not expected to live through the
winter." Soon after came another letter: "Mother will not live another
month"; and this was followed by a telegram: "Mother is dying; come at
once."
It was a bleak and gusty afternoon in the depth of winter, and the
Sunday train stopped at every station, and the journey dragged its
jogging length of four hours out to the weary end. The little station
shivered by an icy sea, and going up the lane the wind rattled and
beat my face like an iron. I hurried, looking through the trees for
the lights that would shine across the park if she were not dead, and
welcome indeed to my eyes were the gleaming yellow squares. Slipping
in the back way, and meeting the butler in the passage, I said: "How
is she?"
"Very bad indeed, sir."
She did not die that night, nor the next, nor yet the next; and as we
waited for death, slow but sure of foot, to come and take what
remained of her from us, I thought often of the degradation that these
lingering deaths impose upon the watchers, and how they force into
disgraceful prominence all that is animal in us.
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