THE SAD SERIOUS COMEDY OF DEATH A Devon cottage kitchen, opening to a tangled spring garden: beyond this idyll a semi- abstract tangle of branches around a great circle of sky: a hole , perhaps a portal. For in a back room, unseen, an old man is nearing the end of his life’s journey. In such times a kitchen can fill with family and visitors: weary daughter Sarah is tired from nighttime calls, soon brother Jonathan is back from London, tensely on the phone to an unseen girlfriend unlikely to turn up and share this death-watch. But an earlier, betrayed one, does. Wants to see old Edward one more time. There’s a posse of official helpers. First on, doffing her coat, middle-aged Karen bustles comfortably about, efficiently nurselike , chatting about reading-glasses. Others appear, talking of hoists and morphine and changes in the dying man’s breath, doing a matter of fact job kindly, with years of experience. THe siblings, joined by one ex-partner and one possibly-current one lack any…
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