What seemed impossible was the idea that she might die before Jamal grew old enough to know her as someone who had been a child herself. If she died while he was still young she’d exist in his memory only as a mother. He’d remember kindnesses and faults. He’d work out his own myth and that would be what he carried of her. That was how she’d live after death, as an exaggeration and an abstraction. She hated the idea and, in a far region of herself, was fascinated by it.
