Eva Hoffman

"So we sat by her bedside that evening, watching for signs of improvement and decline. As if anything could be done about either. And yet the signs had to be witnessed, in their every minute, hopeless alteration. They had to be witnessed for human life to continue; for human beings not to slide into an abyss of unmeaning. They had to be witnessed for our sake, as much as for hers. That much I understood. And how strange that it's at that final moment that humans seem to be willing to attend most unreservedly to one another; to perform, finally, that close, unjudgemental reading of lip and eye, of striving and failure, that is the real act of love."

The Secret by Eva Hoffman
Vintage, London, 2003
Page 153