my aunt is giving me a painting which my uncle did it 1974, they're having it cleaned and framed for me, and i'm going to take it back to cambridge. i can't tell you what it looks like - there's a kind large bird, maybe a variety of peafowl or pheasant, and the overwhelming impression of aquamarine and blue - because when they showed it to me i started bawling and they said oh dear we didn't mean to upset you and took it away. everyone keeps trying to tell me how bad it was for him in his last months, and how peaceful his death was, and how ready he was to go. (he woke up that morning and said, i have a feeling today is going to be a very long day. and that he was hallucinating - who are you talking to, my aunt asked. the person who brought my ticket. what ticket? there, he said, showing my aunt his hand. you'll come and call me when it's time ah? he said to the invisible person. okay, thank you. and then he put his ticket into his pocket.) i know he was in a bad state, and i am glad to know he had a good death, surrounded by family, and my aunt sat by his bed saying, go lah, go in peace, and her hand was on his heart until it stopped. i'm glad i know that, i'm glad to have all the details, all the pieces of memories that anyone gives me, but the more i know of his misery and bodily failures towards the end the worse it is for me. do you remember which chinese empress it was, who was very ill in her last days and refused to let the emperor see her, so that his memory of her would be of her beauty and vitality instead. everyone keeps saying, when you remember him, remember the happy times, but whenever i think of my uncle i see him in the hospital, dying, and everything i am told of his deterioriation deepens that vision of suffering.