I was reading a New Yorker recently and I read an article about fishing for chain pickerel in the lakes and rivers of New Hampshire and thereabouts.
Now this is not a subject about which I would normally read, not having any particular interest in fish (other than for eating), or in fishing, never having held a rod in my life.

I'm not sure why but the New Yorker has a tendency to make you behave thus: that is to read things you would skip elsewhere.

Anyway, the author explained how the learning of how to fish for these creatures had provided for him, as a child, some of the closest moments he had experienced with his father.

The essay continued with detailed descriptions of his lifelong exploits with chain pickerel and ended with a depiction of how he had sat by his father's death-bed and found himself describing, to the comatose occupant, the fine details of his most recent hunt for the chain pickerel. (I'm not sure if you hunt for fish: such is the depth of my ignorance about the species).

The story concludes with a description of the son seeing his father's eyes well-up as a consequence of the tale.

This, though charming, I found deeply disturbing: on two counts.

Firstly it has been reported in recent weeks that doctors have discovered that the brains, of certain individuals who are so deeply unconciusness that they are considered to be in a vegatative state, can react in precisely the same manner as those of fully compis mentis beings.

This, of course raises the alarming spectre that many a sentient person has had their life ended because they are thought not to be sentient.

And I have a personal experience in this regard also.

I too found myself at the bedside of an unconcious and dying relative.
I think I managed a few words on my arrival but I found I could not sustain a bedside monologue: I sat in her presence and thought the thoughts that might have been said.
I have since harboured a certain shame about this failure which is now compounded by the hypothesis that this person, whom I considered to be unconcious, may have had the capacity to hear my words... had they been uttered.

Maybe I would have done better had I been a fisherman............of chain pickerel.