LIFE is very surreal at the moment. But then it would be strange if it weren’t. My highpoint of the day is the physio’s visit when, Lazarus like, I rise from my wheelchair, grip the Zimmer and off we go up and down the corridors.

I graciously accept the raised fists in triumph of the aides and the nurses but with a nod and a smile only. No way am I releasing my death hold to give a high five.

The physio, a tall striking blonde who gives off waves of empathy, walks behind me pulling my wheelchair in case I need a rest. I have never done so.

As I pass other rooms, I glimpse the other patients – the man with the heavily bandaged knee and thigh who powers down my corridor several times a day.

Tall and gaunt he looks neither left nor right and his face is tense in a permanent grimace.

Yesterday the nurse shouted at him to slow down, slow down, ‘You’re not in a marathon. Gently. Gently.'

He did but after two passes he returned to his previous gallop. This is a man, I think, determined to regain whatever he lost, even if it kills him trying.

In another room is the woman I’ve privately labelled The Game Old Girl. God help her, both her legs are huge and pitted but I see no signs of fracture. I do know she fell and perhaps damaged veins, or that is as much as I understood when she paused at my door and we exchanged war stories.

I can see she’s in great discomfort but four times a day she pushes herself, on a Zimmer with wheels, up and down, pausing every so often as if a thought has struck her.

I know that pause – it is to catch her breath while pretending to think of something. I do it as if admiring the view when out.

Then there’s the rather more refined woman – a limp is all the evidence left of whatever trauma she endured. She wears silk dresses and skirts and her feet are shod in ballerina pumps. She is always fully made up.

But still she walks….and walks.

Two doors are closed and I now know what/who lies behind them for there are two such persons left.

I know because the other morning as I sat scouring the internet, I heard the shrieks of what I took to be a tantruming child. As I tried to focus on the odd high-pitched word, the shrieks turned into wails and sobs both painful and intrusive to hear, finally fading to gasps of utter despair.

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Later I discovered they’d come from the daughter of a man who had just breathed his last. For it seems there is no separate wing for palliative care – those nearing the end of life are spread amongst us, not kept apart.

I am not sure how I feel about that. There is the innate horror of being cheek by jowl with death and also the belief that the final days, hours, minutes should pass in tranquillity and peace.

But then perhaps when facing eternal silence, one’s ears hold on to the sounds of life – of the canes tapping in the corridor; the babble of visitors as they come and go; even the laughter that occasionally echoes from a room or a group of aides.

Perhaps if capable, he asked for his door, like mine, to be left open and he too had followed the daily progress of Fixated Man and Game Old Girl.

The young aide whom I’d gently probed to uncover the cause of the despairing wails, seemed genuinely saddened by his death. ‘We all are,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve known him off and on for a while now. But he wasn’t alone. His family was with him.'

I asked his age and had her repeat it twice in case I had my figures wrong. No, he was 95.

This is where people usually say, ah well, he had a good innings or the French, non-cricketing term. And it’s true – it wasn’t a tragedy as is the death of a child or a young father but it was still a moment of great sadness and loss for those who’d loved and known him all their days. Grief doesn’t recognise numbers.

I was comforted too that the aides and nurses also felt that sadness even though they witness endings so often.

In all, I’ve decided it’s fitting that life and death should occupy adjoining rooms for that is our destiny however much we turn our heads away and march with grim determination up and down the corridors of our lives.

So, I said a few prayers for him, whether he believed or not, and a few for the two others who for now live among us, the temporarily broken, who, God willing, will walk out of here and continue our lives.

It’s, I believe, a known fact that the proximity of death re-energises us; forces us to look with joy upon our own lives and yes, count our blessings.

As ever, it has taken a jolt to release I’d had forgotten – again – to live in the moment; not in the past and not in the often-feared future.

In time of course, I’ll forget again and fret about things that may or may not come to pass.

But for now, and for some time to come, I’ll relish the present.