From The therapeutic uses of ache - 2012 

Recently I drove back to Northland for a few days. Aunty Huia had been in a car accident three weeks earlier and was not well. Her leg was sore and she had a headache. In hospital I pull up a chair beside her bed and we talk. First, she growls me for coming. It is a waste of time and of petrol and who on earth is looking after my daughter? She makes a point of starting the conversation in Māori so she can switch to English with a sigh as I lag behind. There is nothing wrong with her — why can’t she be left alone?

After this she is silent and I tell her I love her, that everybody loves her and that she is important to us. ‘Oh, come on, man! ... Gee ... I don’t know.’ She turns her head and looks away for a while. We sit and say nothing. Noise will come later: the diagnosis of her sub-dural haemorrhages, her fear of incapacity, the worry she will not be able to finish the knitting she has promised to a charity in Romania, the explanations to her family. But for the time being, we have to sit. She stares out the window at workmen demolishing an old nursing home next door, its timbers akimbo.