After a lifetime's independence– yes, selfish independence as my daughter would rightly claim – I am terrified of being reduced to childhood once more, to helplessness, to seas of confusion from which the cruel lucid intervals poke up like rock shoals.

I need them and they need me to need them

Let her be with her memories. Better that than be aware of this reality.

Things don't matter, people do

The dead and not-yet dead, we are company all together.

Try to capture what you can't bear to be without

I've grieved enough for his life cut short and for mine for running on for so long with so little in it. It's weakness now, but I suppose I am crying out of a general sense of loss. Maybe I am mourning for the human condition.