It is an immersion. I am being swallowed up by all this grief. Not mine. Others. Joan Didion’s, Viktor Frankl’s, Marion Coutts’, D. H.’s. It is too much. Sometimes. And now I’ve just come back from drawing in C. I could only see one of the residents. He was sittitng at one of the dining room tables waiting for breakfast to be served. The staff all greeted him cheerfully. Saying his name. He didn’t respond. He might’ve smiled. I couldn’t see. He stared into space and sometimes around the room. He didn’t look distressed or melancholic. Just blank. Blank. How sad, said P. when I told him of him. Is it? I don’t know. He is cared for. He is not in distress. He is leaving, that’s all. Going. Going, going, gone.
