‘A God-awful disease, dementia …’
Everybody agreed, dementia was a God-awful disease. And then enough was enough and it was high time to get back to life. The discussion of millimetres resumed. Somebody would win the game of pétanque. Somebody would be determined to get revenge. Night would fall and they would say goodbye to each other, but not for long, because soon they would meet again, on the day of the black raincoats, to sit down together on their usual cold pew in church. And when they’re standing together in consecrated silence at the cemetery, they can remark that it was a close thing, any closer and my body — an insignificant footnote — would have been lowered down next to Rosa Rozendaal’s in what they unthinkingly call ‘the merciful earth’.