JOURNAL ENTRIES…

10 Sept. 1976

Yesterday I went to see a dying uncle and a cruelly hopeful aunt. She still believes she will take him home. He is already transformed into that kind of body death creates—as a last final insult—The boy in the next bed, 20 years old – muscular dystrophy – collapsed lung – a father who took his huge deformed hand and kissed it. I could not take my eyes away and was afraid of being thought rude. But they did not know that I was there at all. —

In the midst of all this pain and ugly dying my aunt caught sight of my cut fingers and shuddered. She couldn’t look at wounds like that, she said