Las gratitudes

"Today an old woman I loved died. I often thought: I owe her so much. O: Without her, I would probably not be here anymore. I thought: She is so important to me. Matter, duty. Is this how you measure Gratitude? Actually, was I grateful enough? Did I show him my gratitude as he deserved? Was I by his side when he needed me, kept him company, was I constant?" reflects Marie, one of the narrators of this book. His voice alternates with that of Jérome, who works in a nursing home and tells us: "I am a speech therapist. I work with words and silence. With what is not said. I work with shame, with secrets, with regrets. I work with the absence, with the memories that are no longer there and with those that reappear after a name, an image, a perfume. I work with yesterday's pain and today's pain. With confidences. And with the fear of dying. It is part of my trade". Both characters -Marie and Jérome- are linked by their relationship with Michka Seld, an old woman whose last months of life tell us these two crossed voices. Marie is her neighbor: when she was a child and her mother was absent, Michka took care of her. Jérome is the speech therapist who tries to get the old woman, who has just been admitted to a nursing home, to recover even partially her speech, which she is losing due to aphasia. And both characters will be involved in Michka's last wish: to find her marriage that, during the years of the German occupation, saved her from dying in an extermination camp by taking her in and hiding her in her house. She never thanked them and now she would want to show them her gratitude...