Synopsis
Thomas is dying.He accepts it. He's chosen to await his death here, in this house by the sea, the house of his childhood. I'm with him. It's still summer. I never realized people could die in the summer.
I thought death was something that always happened in winter, that it needed the cold, gray skies and bleakness. But I realize it can also do its deed in the sun, in broad daylight. I think that Thomas will welcome it in the broad daylight.
This winter, when he was hospitalized, I thought it would begin with a numbness in his arms and legs, that he'd have some kind of contraction, and then there would be an emergency, something sudden, something brutal. But not at all: instead there's a nonchalance, a kind of emptiness, a sluggishness, a renunciation under the summer heat.
Still, this foreseeable, expected death will bring about a cataclysm. It will affect all of our lives. It will modify them, force them into a new, unexpected direction. It will throw our lives out of whack, without any of us being able to fight it. This death will be the most important event.
My brother is dying.
