One has only to read so far as page 6 of West to come upon these virulent words. We quote them in full for those who have not read Jim Perrin’s book:
There was nothing to detain me in the caravan by the stream where she and I had mostly lived for the last eighteen months.* To continue there was clearly going to become increasingly difficult and inconvenient as well as painful, for pathological savagery circles after a death, breeding in families, seeking a focus and seeking a target, the guilt of those who neglected and exploited and abused fixing invariably post mortem on those who cared for and provided.
Autonomous human love is always a threat to those whose claims on affection are based not on right behaviour but through propinquity. In the aftermath of a death, the close and caring bereaved are often made homeless, their joint belongings pillaged, whilst the erstwhile-negligent blood-tied ones are emotionally and materialistically merciless in their reappropriations of the deceased. Continue reading