Three score years and ten is all we get, some get more others get less. My father-in-law was a simple man, he asked for nothing much. Sailed the seven seas as a lad like many from my city, then settled down on a labourers wage with his wife. His father died young, his mother never worked, she died blind in an old peoples home aged 92. Three of her four sons already buried before her, and sadly two grandchildren too.

He fell into a trench on a building site in 1974, and was never the same again. Burst ulcers, heart by-pass, several strokes, but worked until he had no work left in him and finished up in a nursing home. Single bed, door locked at 6.00 pm every night "for his own safety" and it there where he lost his wife to cancer six months ago. We say it killed him too.

He saved what he could for his old age and the government took every penny back as payment for his nursing home costs. He leaves a son and a daughter and five grandchildren who all loved him. The doctors switched his breathing aperatus off after a few hours, and the life ebbed away from him. They wanted the bed, because lifes goes on for some.