Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. I… - Louise Penny

Clara Morrow had painted Ruth as the elderly, forgotten Virgin Mary. Angry, demented, the Ruth in the portrait was full of despair, of bitterness. Of a life left behind, of opportunities squandered, of loss and betrayals real and imagined and created and caused. She clutched at a rough blue shawl with emaciated hands. The shawl had slipped off one bony shoulder and the skin was sagging, like something nailed up and empty.
“And yet the portrait was radiant, filling the room from one tiny point of light. In her eyes. Embittered, mad Ruth stared into the distance, at something very far off, approaching. More imagined than real.
Hope.
Clara had captured the moment despair turned to hope. The moment life began. She’d somehow captured Grace.

To remain conscious and continent was her new goal.

It is sweet and right to die for your country…. an old and dangerous lie. It might be necessary, but it is never sweet and rarely right. It’s a tragedy.