The lost joys of amputation

The telephone rang. My mother, the Dowager Viscountess, creaked to an upright position and was passed the handset by Crawford who creaked but who was by no means upright.

All conversation in the room was placed on mute while everyone pretended not to listen to the one-sided call...

"Yes."
"Yes."
"No?"
"Dropped dead, you say?
"On the spot, you say?"
"How simply dreadful. Thank you very much. Goodbye."

We knew it couldn't be good news. Someone had met their maker and doubtless now diaries were going to have to be cleared so make room for the service.

Silence hung in the air as my mother composed herself. The problem was that as my mother got older the deaths of friends and acquaintances had become something of an entertainment in itself. Rarely would a call to her not include an update on who had expired recently, how awful it was and why I should remember the person concerned. The extent of this obsession came to embrace also friend of friends, friends of unmet relatives of friends and even their chiropodists. Her preference was for people to die in the Telegraph rather than the Times although even the parish magazine offered scope for bereavement.

Oh, I'm sorry. The silence is still hanging and I've still not told you who had died. Not that it really matters because like me you probably would never have heard of them. Despite my irreverence I sat in reverential hush prepared for the worst.

"It's Letty Kerr. Last night.", my mother spat out. My face communicated sympathy even thought to my knowledge my mother and Leticia Kerr had not spoken to each other since that thing in Harrogate in 1972.

Just then one of the assembled company sought to add substance to the sympathy.

"And she's only just had two toes amputated."

My sympathetic frown mutated into a smirk and then a silent grimace. The grimace became a snort, then an embarrassed whimper before finally I lost my composure and started to laugh, cry and gasp uncontrollably. Fortunately no-one called an ambulance in response to my asthma attack.

It was the incongruity of the unfairness of how Letty had been deprived of the full enjoyment of her amputation by being so cruelly snatched away with everything to limp for.

Fortunately, in death, Letty had brought humour in a way that she never achieved in life and this helped us come to terms with her loss over the next few minutes.