My last day in Seattle was comparitively uneventful. The photographer had long wanted to take black and white photos of a naked guy in the rain under an umbrella, so I obliged. Unfortunately, no sooner had he unpacked his camera, than the rain stopped and the sun came out.

We both seemed to have run out of energy by this time, so, as the rain started up again, we spent the balance of the day in the living room, he snoozing, me working on editing my journal in preparation to move it to my other website, and writing my latest script exercise for my screenwriting class. And by five, I was in the airport, on my way home.

The ensuing week has been pretty awful, though. I fell into the deepest depression I've experienced in a long while. I'm experienced enough with depression not to let it totally run my life, so I continued to do my usual activities as best as I could, but there was no joy to anything.

I never really know what triggers my depressions, but this week there was a coincident factor that left me thinking. First thing Monday, I received an email from my sister, Sally, about my Mother. My Mother has Alzheimers and has been steadily losing her faculties over the last few years. Now, apparently, it's taken a turn for the worse recently, and it sounds like she's in a pretty severe dementia. It's making life very hard for both my sisters, and, especially my Father, who's seeing his life companion turning into someone unrecognizable.

When I heard about this, I was shocked, but I wasn't aware of any deep emotional reaction. Yet, there was the depression, which began that morning, and has deepened all week. It has made me wonder if the depression is really the spin-side of my relative inability to feel strong emotions about friends and family. That, by the way, is the main reason I started to see a therapist - my lack of empathy. But, so far, I hadn't connected the dots between the depression and the lack of empathy in such a stark way. I don't even know if, in fact, the two are connected, but it provides a glimmering of insight.

By the end of the week, my depression lifted a little when I came to the decision to go home to England this Summer and stay with my sister Kirstie. I know it will probably not be like the previous two years, where I've so much enjoyed spending time with my parents. But I need to play my part, small though it is, in giving care.

I've also agreed to call my Dad weekly, to take a little bit of the load off my sisters. They say that he's been sometimes tearful with them on the phone. That's something that's hard for me to imagine. I've never shared a single, real, emotive moment with my Dad since I was a child - we just don't relate on that level. I don't know how I'd react if he started to cry while he was on the phone with me, and, to be honest, the prospect scares my pants off. But there's no escaping the brutal fact that real life is intruding here. No amount of rethinking is going to change the fact that my Mother is dying, and there's real unhappiness and agony ahead for the family.

The usual warning: please don't write with sympathy. I appreciate the thought, but I really don't want to receive sympathetic emails. That's not why I write. Thanks for understanding.