Empty hospital conference room

Meet here, eventually
Montreal, QC
January 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

This is a conference room on the 6th floor of the Jewish General Hospital's Pavilion K, just down the hall from my father-in-law's room. The cool, modern, rectilinear aesthetic contrasts starkly with the ugliness of serious illness. It's an architectural facade, if you will, that neatly, if not completely, masks the immense sadness that pervades this place.

I'd be lying if I said this was easy. It isn't. I doubt it ever will be. What happens next is anyone's guess. It makes you wish we'd never get old, never get sick, never lose the ability to care for ourselves.

Which leaves me, the storyteller, grasping for ways to wrap my head around this, and grasping for ways to cushion what's happening for my wife, our kids, everyone around us.

Simple truth: I can't. And no amount of words or pixels will change reality, or redirect us away from what we fear is inevitable.

In other words, it's a pretty picture. And it does a decent job placeholding the day, the moment, the dread we feel. But that's all it is. To assume anything else is to be naive.

Still, it's all I've got to work with for now. And it'll have to do in the absence of a better alternative.

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