Going to help Robert
Going to Help Robert by David N. A5 84pp. Designed, typeset, edited and published by Graeme Walker in 2021.
“I had been visiting Robert occasionally. Irregular visits because we weren’t close friends and he lived some distance from me. He was ill but his illness was never part of our conversations. One day he told me that he’d like to ask me a favour and do some shopping for him. A woman friend who had been doing it, was not well and couldn’t do it at the moment. Although Robert was only wanting me to help out a couple of times, there was something more going on. As we talked and looked at each other I saw that Robert knew he was dying. I said, ‘Yes, of course I’ll do that for you...’, knowing these words were a sort of pledge to him and to myself that I would try to walk with him on his indeterminate last lap. I felt the need to start writing up the relationship. I wanted to set down the times we met, remember what happened by recording a map of events. I wanted to understand and learn something more for myself about the process of death and dying. I wanted to understand more about caring and compassion. I wanted to help Robert by staying alert and true to him.
David N. 2021
“I am disturbed by the question that arises out of me: whether the months of agony that Robert suffered were somehow punishment for his transgressions. While I have never done anything especially bad in my life by comparison, to ask such a question is to reveal oneself to be a stupendous hypocrite. As David says, “show me a saint and I’ll say a prayer for him”. For the rest of us, we have to deal with the fact that the things we do, whether by design, or as a result of the context in which we live and the leverages and incentives directed upon our hands, we all cause the suffering of others. Every single day. Who are we to punish when we buy clothes that are surely made in sweat shops? When we buy fruit from thousands of miles away, which indirectly causes the toxification of the only place we know where life can be sustained?”
Graeme Walker, from the introduction
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