It's All Performance Art 59

Good morning, Gentle Reader, and Merry Christmas.  Some of you might recall on this chilly Christmas morning the interview with Santa Clause that I ran last year.  Here is the link if you care to refresh your memory.  https://aaronbenjaminzacharias.blogspot.com/2018/12/waking-dead-10.html  That one was on Skype and it was pretty hard on my old laptop which badly overheated, especially when old Saint Nick got a little bit, shall we say, excited?  But now I have a new machine and, yes, I was going to write about the follow up I tried to do with the Jolly Old Elf.

He is still in Costa Rica, but apparently the old guy is ailing and has been moved to a seniors' care facility.  One of his former assistants at the wellness spa he was operating there was on hand to fill in the blanks for us.  "Oh, dear Kris, as he likes to be called", wrote his assistant in a text.  "He took a turn for the worse last year, just around New Year's.  I wasn't there, but I heard all about it from other staff.  This very young woman, a girl actually, came to visit with a baby in her arms.   She couldn't have been more than fifteen.  And she was dressed rather strangely, wearing a kind of long blue robe that also covered her head.  I actually thought she was Muslim at first. Kris had this look of absolute shock and horror on his face as she came over to him.  Then, the strangest thing happen.  She held out the kid and he kind of reluctantly took him in his arms, and just held him on his lap while the baby stared at him very intently.  Kris said not a word.   After a couple of minutes, the girl picked the kid up and left.  Kris has never been the same.  Just from time to time he utters the word, "Bless-ed" with a strange, kind of rapt smile on his face, and then he says nothing more.  They say he has a rare form of dementia.  I only wish we could do more for him, but he is well taken care of where he is.  They give him everything he needs, and he just sits there in the garden in the shade of a mango tree, with this same dumb smile on his face, and only every couple of hours will he mutter just one single word.  "Bless-ed."