That ain't the way to have fun

My Mother in-law broke her hip on the day after Mother's Day. Of course she was working out in the yard when it happened.
When I was younger if you talked about people in their eighties I kind of pictured aliens, or people who were so out of touch they might as well have been. Now that I really do know people who are, I can say, categorically, that they are just like you and me, apparently just more fragile.
I sat in her hospital room for a couple of days worried and concerned because at first it looked very bad for her due to some complications, but after they gave her a bionic hip, she seemed to really improve to such a degree that no one was even remotely worried about her any more, they just wanted to know what her next meal was going to be.
I'm not kidding; the three meals were as much a spectacle as the changing of the guards. We all watched as Lenore brought her food for her, set up her double top hospital table, so that all of the clutter could stay and there is another surface you just have to pull out for the tray. She pulled off the cover to reveal steaming hot food that under any other circumstances would be undesirable, but not unlike the bar at the airport, that food became incalculably precious.