Everyone is seated around the table wearing party hats, eating cookies and ice-cream. There is a lot of laughter and noise. Wrapping paper from birthday gifts is all over the floor. The birthday cake is brought in with five candles and Bobbie blows them out while everyone sings: "Happy birthday." As his mother cuts the cake, Bobbie is jumping up and down on his chair, calling out: "Me first! Me first!

I worked in my garden today. It was cold, a typical fall day that was somehow appropriate to my autumnal, melancholy mood. It is still hard for me to think of it as "my" garden. This was always Steve's province and my only involvement was to pick some flowers, or some vegetables from the back garden. Even this Steve usually did, beaming with pride as he came into the kitchen bearing a basketful of golden corncobs, fat cucumbers or scarlet, juicy tomatoes.

The Talmud tells us that: "Youth is a garland of roses; old age a crown of willows." (Sabbath 152a). It is hard to admit to growing older, and we always think of old age as 15 years older than we are. The truth is that once you have passed 60, society sees you as "a golden ager". A well-known American advertisement for moisturizing cream declares: "I won't grow old gracefully. I intend to fight it every step of the way!" I always imagined I would share that philosophy - that I'd dye my hair and look for clothes that were very youthful, but it hasn't happened. My hair is white and my clothes reflect my maturity.

They say that old age is always 15 years older than you are. I can remember when the truth of this hit home most forcibly. When I was a young mother with four small children, 16-year-old Lucy used to come after school occasionally to baby-sit for me. One day I returned from shopping and she told me I'd had a caller, but she didn't remember her name. "What did she look like?" I asked.