Like A Localized Deafness

Kristina Budelis excerpts the handwritten notes of Roland Barthes, on the death of his mother:

Struck by the abstract nature of absence; yet it's so painful, lacerating. Which allows me to understand abstraction somewhat better: it is absence and pain, the pain of absence—perhaps therefore love?

Roland Barthes - Semiotics - Social Sciences - Linguistics - Semioticians