When I first turned toward Georges Lemmen’s Julie Lemmen Sleeping in an Armchair, I did not see a delicate fin-de-siècle pastel. I saw my mother. The soft posture of Julie, folded inward with a kind of quiet surrender, echoed the countless moments in recent days when my mother has sat beside my grandmother’s bed, her body bowed by the long choreography of care. The painting’s muted light and blurred edges felt uncannily familiar. It showed in soft tones the atmosphere of late-night vigils, lamp-lit rooms, and the tender fatigue of those who stay awake for someone else.
Lemmen’s work, though intimate, is not sentimental. As a member of Les XX, he belonged to a circle intent on exploring psychological interiority. Influenced by Neo-Impressionism, his pastels often dissolved the hard boundaries of things, allowing color and form to mingle in perceptual vibration. Here, the pastel medium itself becomes emblematic. Its powdery fragility, prone to smudging with even slight pressure, embodies the very emotional terrain that caregiving inhabits. It is a place where the edges of identity blur under the weight of responsibility and love. Symbolist undertones permeate the scene, situating Julie not as an individual narrative figure but as an embodiment of a mood, a state of being. It is precisely this atmospheric quality that bridges the gap between Lemmen’s world and my own.
In Julie’s bowed head and gentle, unguarded posture, I recognize the exhausted grace of my mother. She has stepped into the role of caregiver with remarkable devotion, repeatedly saying she feels “called” to this work. After a lifetime as a special education teacher, where the ethic of care shaped her daily practice, she brings those same instincts to my grandmother’s bedside. Watching her, I witness a form of care that aligns with what Nel Noddings describes as the “engrossment” of the caregiver. That is, the full presence to the needs of the dependent other. This presence is not abstract; it is embodied. It is the way she steadies my grandmother during a difficult moment, the patience in her voice, the willingness to lose sleep so that my grandmother may find a little rest.
These days have been long and heavy, yet full of small rituals that give shape to our shared vigil: the soft rustle of blankets, the careful dispensing of medication, the whispered conversations about pain levels and comfort. The house has taken on the sensory qualities of a liminal space. Rooms enhabit the low hum of fans, the rhythm of labored breathing, the amber glow of table lamps. Caregiving carries its own kind of phenomenology: a heightened attunement to the minute shifts of another’s body. My mother moves through this environment with a grace that is both learned and instinctual, a choreography of compassion.
What deepens the significance of this moment is the contrast with our family’s earlier experiences of loss. Those histories still echo with a particular kind of ache: the ache of absence. My grandfather’s death in 2002 fractured our family’s emotional landscape. That week in the hospital was a shockwave: sudden, disorienting, devoid of the quiet time needed for understanding. After his death, closure felt impossible, as though grief had been set in motion without any ritual to guide it.
Then came the death of my mother’s father, discovered only after he failed to appear at church. His a solitary passing that carried an almost unbearable sadness in its isolation. Psychologists sometimes describe such deaths as “unwitnessed,” and the term captures a haunting truth: no one bore witness to his final hours. There was no presence to accompany him, no final act of care. That absence left a psychic mark on all of us but especially my mother who was denied closure with her father.
The story with my maternal grandmother unfolded as another rupture. After building a new life with a new family, she drifted away from us until contact dissolved entirely. A final remark about her “first grandchild” in the new family remains a small, sharp bruise in my chest. When she died, we learned of it only after her cremation. There was no vigil, no farewell, no moment to sit with the weight of what had been lost and what had never been allowed to form.
Across these experiences, one theme threads the narrative: helplessness. As a family defined by helping, we were denied the very thing that gives our identity its shape. Grief, when deprived of participation, becomes complicated. It becomes an unresolved chord that never fully settles into harmony.
This time, however, is different. This time we are allowed to be present. My grandmother rests in the front room, surrounded by people who love her. Everyone has taken part: my mother, father, brother, and myself. There is a shared sense of responsibility, but also a shared sense of privilege. The privilege of holding vigil. Of bearing witness. Of tending to the needs of someone who once tended to ours. End-of-life researchers often describe this phase as “anticipatory grief,” but the term feels too clinical for what we are experiencing. It is not only a grieving of what is coming, but also a healing of what came before.
My grandmother has always been fiercely independent, and allowing others to help her has not come easily. Yet in these few days, something has softened. Her acceptance of care, tentative at first, then more open, has become a reciprocal act. In letting us care for her, she offers us a chance to mend old frayed threads in our family fabric. The emotional distances of past years diminish in the presence of shared tenderness. Stories resurface. Laughter returns mixed with tears. Hard feelings loosen their grip. Vulnerability breeds closeness.
This present moment feels like a reclamation of something denied to us in earlier losses: the ability to accompany someone across the threshold. We are not shut out this time. We are inside the circle of care.
Returning to Lemmen’s pastel, the parallels become more resonant. Julie’s posture embodies the kind of sleep that follows total expenditure. It ia a rest earned through devotion. Her body leans into the cushions as though she has finally released the day’s burdens. The pastel’s fragility mirrors the fragility of caregiving itself: one moment of emotional equilibrium can be smudged by exhaustion, frustration, or fear. And yet, within that fragility, there is beauty. The soft halo of light around Julie’s figure becomes a quiet affirmation of the sacredness of rest.
Philosophically, the painting invites reflection on the ethics of looking. Emmanuel Levinas suggests that the face of the other calls us into responsibility, an ethical summons. Even in sleep, even partially obscured, Julie’s presence carries that summons. When I look at her, I am reminded that to witness another person’s vulnerability is to be entrusted with something precious. Caregiving, in this sense, becomes both an ethical and aesthetic practice: attentiveness as a form of art.
In the gentle surrender depicted by Lemmen, I see my mother’s strength. I see her exhaustion, her devotion, her quiet resolve. I see the lineage of care that flows through her and my father, through me and my brother, and now toward my grandmother in her final season. This moment, this long vigil, has become a site of healing, not only for her but for all of us. We are reclaiming a presence denied in earlier chapters of our family story.
This time, we are not helpless.
This time, love is allowed to complete its work.
And in Julie’s soft, slumbering posture, I see the emblem of that work. I see a portrait of care rendered in the language of rest, exhaustion, and grace.
I see my mother.