20150209 – maandag

Rouw werk

Ik las:

Grief-work. It sounds such a clear and solid concept, with its confident two-part name. But it is fluid, slippery, metamorphic. Sometimes it is passive, a waiting for time and pain to disappear; sometimes active, a conscious attention to death and loss and the loved one; sometimes necessarily distractive […] And you have never done this kind of work before. It is unpaid, and yet not voluntary; it is rigorous, yet there is no overseer; it is skilled, yet there is no apprenticeship. And it is hard to tell whether you are making progress; or what would help you do so.
[p.104-105, Levels of life, Julian Barnes]

en vanavond ging de telefoon, en het was mijn moeder, en die heeft een zus, en die heeft een dochter, en die heeft niet langer een echtgenoot…