I’m not ready to say goodbye: approaching the etiquette of grief. #autism

Yesterday I visited a dear, dear old friend. She is not dying, she is living – though time is closing in.

I had left it late, not wanting to impose, not knowing how to approach this illness. We kept saying we would meet – but we didn’t find the moment.

A very ‘neurotypical deficit’.

Returning to the differences in processing with which I began my piece, it seems to me that as NT move speedily onwards to the next person and the next opportunity they may fail to notice many examples of autistic kindness.

What an unfortunate processing deficit that would turn out to be.

Underneath the Fig Tree

Sometimes fate brings the virtual to life, and so it was when, Alex Forshaw of Married with Aspergers, came to visit the Unravelling Time exhibition I’m currently participating in. We met under a fig tree, one unusually sunny Sunday in September, and over the course of three glorious hours Alex revealed herself to be exactly as she