“He would swing wildly, in those last years — not so much from sobriety to drink but from calmness to depression. But he was shy, he didn’t want anyone else to be troubled by it, so he would be quiet most of the time. That was his only defence. To keep it within so the fear would not hurt others.

I keep thinking of the lines from Goethe … ‘Oh, who will heal the sufferings / Of the man whose balm turned poison?’ I can only clarify this range in him by focussing on this metamorphosis. At the end he moved courteous among his few friends so they never realized, or could only guess at, his torn state, and by then he had already gone too far, was on the cliff. And how could his children know when he would write them his strange quirky notes, such as, ‘Dear Jenny — I am in the quite well. I hope you are in the same well. Love Daddy xxx’?

His fantasies were awful. Paranoia took over during his downward swings. He personally shattered three hundred eggs. Dug a pit and threw them in beating them to pieces with a large staff so nothing would survive — all because he knew someone was trying to poison the family. This he did secretly so no one would worry.

When he could no longer hold all the information, the awareness of what was happening, he would turn to drink. Or, in the last year before he died, he broke down completely. Ceremonies darkened around him. His two closest friends were saddened, not just for what had happened to him but because it seemed he no longer trusted them. He was in the well of total silence. Sat on the verandah looking out onto coconut trees, the suspect chickens. He cooked himself an omelette and a cup of soup. At this point he did not drink. He sat catatonic, his eyes drifting over the lawn. It was too late to act secure, polite.”

— Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family (via hours)