When I sprang to answer the telephone last night, I chirped brightly into the receiver our son's nickname. The voice that responded, shrill and sounding confused definitely wasn't that of our son. This was the day of the week and the time of night he regularly calls us. Just goes to show you that habit on occasion comes hard up against coincidence.

I became confused myself, and perhaps my voice sounded shrilly perturbed to the one at the other end. Who tried again, somewhat garbled, I felt, asking whether I was me.  Sure enough I was, and so the other voice, sounding relief, identified herself. My dear old childhood friend, none other. Whom when we saw one another two years ago in the flesh after a fifty-year absence (out of sight out of mind) looked exactly as she did when we were young girls. There were three of us together on that occasion, recalling old times.

A little more creased, as do we all appear, a trifle more weighty, but ebullient as I always knew them to be. Despite all the setbacks and sorrows that life has thrown at both, obviously mitigated somewhat by the good things they have also lived with. We'd been in email conversation with one another for years, but that was the first time we had returned to Toronto in ages, and arranged to meet.

She was calling to ask after my husband, who was one of her friends just as I was, when we were all in our mid-teens. It was her impression that he was bed-ridden, having endured the mind-bending surgery of having a heart valve replaced along with a double bypass. No, I said to her, he is recovering, he is ambling about nicely, he is driving, with no problem, and he is anxious to return to his former state of physical fitness.

She was both mystified and concerned. He is? she asked doubtfully, unprepared to accept that my response wasn't ironic, but I assured her he was fine. She, on the other hand, several months earlier underwent hip replacement surgery. She's not so fine, she told me mournfully. Hasn't been bothering with physio exercises, and uses a walker. Presumably, she sold her car, something she was musing about doing a year ago but I didn't mention it, a sore point.

She'd had shoulder surgery years ago and took quite a long while to rehabilitate from that. At her age of 80 she wasn't in outstandingly good physical shape to begin with. This sounds like a steady downward spiral, a decline that she will be unable to challenge because the spirit to do so is simply not there. This is why it was so difficult for her to understand that someone else who had undergone a far more complex and serious operation was steadily improving, post-surgery.

And she was not. Anyone can urge someone they care about to work harder at rehabilitation, but if the will is lacking on the part of the person themselves, it's a sad cause.