Sympathy for the Iron Lady

I am no fan of Baroness Thatcher. But we're all human, and it turns out she is too. Iron Maggie is slowly rusting.

This is the bit that most arouses my sympathy, the last few lines of the story:

Carol Thatcher wrote that one of the most difficult episodes in recent years had been the death of her father Denis Thatcher in 2003, which her mother often forgot had happened.

"Losing Dad ... was truly awful for Mum, not least because her dementia meant she kept forgetting he was dead," she wrote.

"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again."

It is a state we all are likely to come to, if the FSM grants us a life sufficiently long.

My uncle, David, is in a group home for Alzheimer's patients in Florida, he's been there since he became paranoid and violent and too much for my aunt Moira to look after. She was a formidable woman and, oddly, reminded me of Mrs. Thatcher in some indefinable way--perhaps it was the sheer indomitability of will brought about by her years as a nurse.

Well in any case, she passed on about five years back now. And my greatest sympathy is for my cousins, because David apparently still greets them with "Hi! How's your mother?"

I hardly know what to wish the Baroness. "Long life" would sound insincere, ironic, which this post really isn't meant to be. Yet "a swift and painless passing" seems somehow malevolent, though we should all desire it.