Can life imitate art is a question that is sometimes posed? In my experience it sometimes can although I wasn't the one who witnessed it in action. Rather, it was my long-suffering, saintly husband who used to regularly do the 'Monica Run' - as we'd got in the habit of calling it - the drive across the city to collect my mother from the elderly people's home she resided in and bring her back to spend the day with us. As the short story was my first love and I'd already had some success in writing for the BBC it wasn't long before I found myself exploring this theme in 'The Usual Arrangement' (see my story collection 'The Straw Hat and Other Stories' on Kindle). In it an elderly woman, waiting for her son to call on Christmas Day, becomes confused when he's late and begins to wonder if he is coming at all. Believing he has forgotten all about her or, worse still, her daughter-in-law has turned him against her, she sadly goes into the dining-room to join the other old ladies and eat her Christmas dinner. Some years after this story was broadcast the identical scene was replayed right down to the tiniest detail in real life. There my mother sat at the dining-table on Christmas Day, still in her hat and coat, the paper crown balanced on her head, the cracker in her hand ready to pull with her neighbour as her contrite son-in-law hastened forward to bear her away to join us all around the family dinner table. It wasn't a story of mine that she ever read but she, who in her heyday had always shown such kindly hospitality to the elderly, would most certainly have appreciated it!
http://www.amazon.com/The-Straw-Hat-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00EVXL3ZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383312014&sr=8-1&keywords=nesta+tuomey
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