We all grow old and die someday.
On the cycle of care and its beauty

When you open 『You can leave the flowers there』, every page is filled with cool images based on icy blue and white.
The occasional red lips, cigarette butts, and colorful flowers seem like joys and pleasures that only exist occasionally in our lives.
Especially the faces of the elderly, full of wrinkles and freckles, are vivid and real, but at the same time express a tragic beauty.
The elderly people admitted to nursing homes each have their own lives.
There are also family members who visit regularly, like a daughter who shows her mother a family album after she loses her memory, or a granddaughter who willingly becomes a conversationalist for her grandfather.
But as time goes by, the family members come less and less and the elderly are gradually forgotten.
The elderly may also experience decline in energy and fading memories of their families, so it may be the same for everyone.
A life where existence and relationships are slowly disappearing.
But the lives of the elderly still go on, and Estelle is a part of them.
If you can fulfill the dreams you never achieved in your life and the regrets that linger until the day you die, even if only in fantasy, why shouldn't you do so?
The problem is that Estelle must experience repeated separation and loss while caring for the elderly and facing death on a daily basis.
“I have already seen hundreds of corpses of people I was in love with.
“No one, really no one, has ever taken care of us by even saying, ‘Are you okay?’”

What is the right mindset and attitude for a caregiver? As care, once a family domain, becomes a formal occupation, it's sometimes dismissed as a cold, clerical activity.
As if feeding, washing, and talking to someone were possible without any emotion.
Estelle collects the belongings of the dead old people one by one and carefully collects them in a drawer, claiming that she has the right to keep these belongings.
For Estelle, the elderly were not a task to be dealt with, but individual human beings and objects of love.
The sense of loss Estelle experiences while caring for and seeing off countless elderly people is likely not simply due to her overly sensitive and overly involved nature in human relationships.
We all grow old and die someday.
So how can the elderly waiting for death in nursing homes be perfect strangers?
The confusion, sadness, and grief that Estelle feels are universal emotions that anyone can feel at the border between life and death.


Throughout the life cycle, humans inevitably need someone's care.
And caring for the sick, the disabled, the very young, the very old is a responsibility that the community should share.
We all have no choice but to care for one another and be cared for.
Is there anything more important than truly understanding that you are no different from others and empathizing with them?
And that is the true utility of stories and art.
In the final chapter of "Just Leave the Flowers There," readers will encounter a shocking yet perfectly natural scene.
And eventually, we will be able to look back on our lives humbly and diachronically.
"Just Leave the Flowers There" is a graphic novel that encourages serious reflection on life, death, care, and care work through a dense narrative, while also offering the artistic pleasure of appreciating cool and beautiful illustrations.
This is a book that all of us who are facing death should read.