My Nan's hilarious impression is how I want to remember her

Nan is in the armchair and we children have helped ourselves to the Russian dolls, a mouth organ and the various coasters or other nick-nacks in the cabinet.

A roast, possibly beef or lamb, is being cooked in a gas fired oven the smell of which lingers at the kitchen door. I may even get a small glass of Lambrusco wine with my dinner later.

If I'm not lucky this week, then it will be a suspiciously green measure of Cream Soda Nan's bought from a man who delivers pop like milk.

The three-seat sofa has been moved – a ritual re-arrangement of her furniture that left no doubt that the family had indeed arrived.

Half sitting in her armchair, Nan has turned towards my parents and is explaining something that has clearly shocked or annoyed her this week. She partly turns her head in a tutting motion, puffing her cheeks slightly as she does.

On this particular occasion it is about a bus journey. She is coming back from town on a service she tells us is almost entirely empty save for her. She has placed her bags on the adjacent seat.

A man she describes as bearded and smelly, conjuring in my mind images of the old ring road tramp that lived in a tent in Wolverhampton, comes towards her and asks: "'Ow menny sates don' yow want."

My brother and I find this hilarious. We insist she repeat this impression on every visit for what seems like the next 15 years.

And she does, the unfortunately fragranced passenger's accent becoming more pronounced with every utterance.

There is no amusing end to this anecdote, no sudden twist in the tale.

It is a mental picture of an uncomplicated moment of familiar serenity repeated time and again, with only the topics of conversation or the programmes on the TV in the corner changing as the weeks go by.

It is how I will choose to remember my Nan.

For the past few years we have been gradually saying goodbye to her, memory by memory. Now we've said it for the last time.

It is both a cruelty and a kindness the way that age and dementia work.

The cruelty is how the lifetime of experiences and laughs can all either be lost or be locked away in some inaccessible recess of the mind.

The kindness, and it is only a small one, is how it prepares those who are going to be left behind for what is going to happen.

Just as it destroys thought and function in those it affects – it prompts the children and the grandchildren to organise and assemble their memories.

It never really means you're ready though.

There was a time earlier this year when I believed we might say our final goodbyes to Nan in hospital, where she had begun to slip further and further away from us.

But once she was transferred to a superb care home she improved remarkably.

In those final weeks Nan had also begun to recognise us again.

I knew there was some of the real her still there because I asked her how she was doing and she tutted and said 'terrible'.

For her, that meant 'fine'.

She was also able to see her great granddaughter, who as a toddler we did not take to the ward, and enjoy her visit. That, in particular, was a delight as she marvelled at and praised the way this uncontrollable ball of energy in corduroy trousers could scale the heights of an armchair in five seconds flat.

This blaze of autumn sunshine was all too short, as life generally is.

But I basked gratefully in it – gifted enough time to gather my memories like treasured possessions before leaving a house for the last time. And now I remember her in the right way – not quiet, slumbering and weak, but loud, opinionated and laughing.