You see?

It’s when he shows me the photographs that it hits me.

D has been playing the mandolin for me – he plays for everyone, some love it, some bark back, D meets any reaction with a smile or a laugh. He is, I think, Chinese, and he used to play and sing in Singapore, in Sicily. His English is limited, stuttering, but he recites the dates with precision, 1954, 1956, 1974. Times he moved places, times he sang.

He knows the start of the tunes, can play them in different keys, but doesn’t know all of the ends. ‘Forgotten’, he laughs. ‘Forgotten!’

He motions me to his bottom drawer, it is full of opera DVDs, La Traviata, Don Giovanni. He sings some of Carmen to me. ‘Could sing high’, he says. ‘Not now. Forgotten!’ He laughs again.

And then he brings out the photographs. In this one he is forty, this one fifty two, this one sixty, and this one is from ten years ago. In all of them he is laughing, smiling, singing. He has a microphone, and is always surrounded by people. They are laughing too, clapping. He is bringing them joy.

D sits on his bed, with the mandolin on his lap. ‘You see?’ he says. ‘You see?’ And he is laughing. ‘I am lucky’.

I finish taking down his words, and tell Susanna I need to go outside. I find myself crying, needing the people I love. I thought I had dealt with the idea that the people I am seeing had lives, were young not long ago. But it had only been the idea I had dealt with. To see the reality in D’s photographs hit me hard.

I go back, and talk with my colleagues. They hug me, and we talk about it over lunch. It is a special bond we are building, a circle of love and trust.

In the afternoon I go and see A. She hasn’t remembered me other times, and is always on the move, trying to find her home, Rotterdam. Today she greets me with joy, sits with me for two hours, and talks. We laugh together, she tells me sly jokes and winks. I hug her goodbye, and walk back past D’s room. He is playing the mandolin, but stops to give me a wave. He laughs. ‘You see?’

Peter Salmon