Our deepest convictions are shaped by our family stories. When my mother was dying of cancer in the unalloyed luxury of our local hospice, she began to fret about the death from the same condition of her own mother in very different circumstances 60 years earlier. Having run out of money to pay her doctors, this granny I never knew was unceremoniously removed to what everyone called the Poor Hospital, neat shorthand for both the patients and the care meted out to them. In fact, I believe it had once been the local poor house. The memory that so distressed my mum was of two careless porters banging her mother's head and elbows against the walls of a narrow staircase as they carted her from one institution to the other like a sack of vegetables. The image still haunts me.
Our deepest convictions are shaped by our family stories. When my mother was dying of cancer in the unalloyed luxury of our local hospice, she began to fret about the death from the same condition of her own mother in very different circumstances 60 years earlier.
