roasted pumpkin.. in a soup with ginger and coconut milk; in another soup with cinnamon and nutmeg and cayenne (blech, too much like pie); yet another soup with ginger, lemon, and rosemary (this one was good). Butternut squash stuffed with roasted shallots and miso, sage, mushrooms and walnuts. Yet more butternut squash roasted and pureed into a pasta sauce with sage brown butter, white beans and pancetta. That last one we eat, just my mum and I, each with a glass of white wine and a glass of perrier with lemon. Mum brings in the last nasturtiums from the garden and makes a beautiful centerpiece that we admire. Dad doesn't eat dinner that day. Later that evening he is violently ill and I realize I should have made him eat something when i gave him the antibiotics.

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Sitting in the kitchen on a Saturday night as my mum makes some favourite south indian dishes - paysam, coconut chutney, sambar. I taste the sambar with her, trying to get the right balance of tamarind and spices. My uncle comes over to make masala dosas on a Sunday morning.

Through it all, my dad sits quietly in his chair, always with a newpaper open or a New Yorker. We coax him to drink water. water with lemon. cold water. warm water. tea. prune juice, orange juice, cranberry juice. The nurses come and go. I pick up things to tempt his appetite: chicken enchiladas. Hand-pulled cantonese noodles with beef and broccoli. Chana bhatura. A smoked pork chop. Lamb kababs. My mum makes a steak with all the fixings. They pick up burgers and onion rings on the way home from bloodwork. I cut up lebanese cucumbers, crunchy celery and dusky russet apples. My mum and uncle go to the indian grocery store and bring back fruits: chickoos and custard apples.

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it's been beautiful out - unseasonably warm - but i don't go out to walk through the leaves like i normally do. The thought of it is completely impossible. Just the thought of walking through those dying leaves makes me want to weep. I don't want to feel the wind on my face, it would be too much.

12:08 p.m. - 2021-10-22