Terry Prone: Aphasia is debilitating, disabling, and leaves me questioning myself

To become non-verbal after a life rooted in words is a sentence without mercy or parole

Bruce Willis as Frank Minna in 'Motherless Brooklyn'. Picture: PA Photo/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc./Glen Wilson

A biographer of Katharine Hepburn once pointed to the way old age genericises everybody. The rich and famous are not spared.

The example he gave was of Hepburn in her old age, mortified to be caught by an unexpected visitor when the former star was eating dinner off a tray table in front of the TV. This is the way the world ends — not with a bang, but with a tray table, a helper, and a TV programme.