My brother took my mother to the countryside for August – “let her have a break from the apartment building.” On Thursday, my mother called from a neighbor’s phone: she had run out of blood pressure medication, and “Wojtek couldn’t be bothered because he was angry.” I dropped the medication off on Friday. My mother was waiting at the gate with a bag.

We drove through the fields, and Mom told me how Wojtek spent the first week taking her for walks, showing her the garden, explaining what he’d planted where. How in the second week he started going out in the evenings, coming home late, and feeling sleepy and irritable in the mornings. How in the third week he barely spoke to her.

“He couldn’t tell me he wanted me to stay longer, but in a different way,” Mom said, looking out the window at the passing villages. “And I couldn’t tell him I wanted to go home.”

Three weeks of silence. Two close people sitting under one roof, unable to say a single honest word to each other.

I took my mother to Retkinia. I watered the flowers on the balcony – they survived, albeit barely. My mother took her medicine, checked her blood pressure, sat in her armchair, and turned on the TV.