Hello, Stranger: How We Find Connection in a Disconnected World by Will Buckingham

Author:Will Buckingham [Buckingham, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Customs & Traditions, sociology, General, history, World
ISBN: 9781783785650
Google: RkAyEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Granta Publications
Published: 2021-07-01T23:29:44.924800+00:00

7

Ghosts

My grandfather was incorrigible to the end. On his deathbed, he flirted with the nurses, and the nurses kindly flirted back. He talked a little, slept a lot. Knowing he didn’t have long left, we spent hours sitting by his bed, watching him slip in and out of sleep. Then, one morning, worn out with the waiting, we went for lunch. When we arrived back at the hospital, he was already dead.

‘Do you want to see him?’ the nurse asked.

We said we did. She led us into the ward, where we stood and looked at his body. It is so ordinary, but so strange: this experience of gazing upon the body of somebody who was, until a moment ago, living and breathing. The sudden absence is so hard to get your head around. A departure with no forwarding address, Emmanuel Levinas called it.1 A leave-taking for no place in particular. The familiar becoming strange.

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