The truth hits me then as his eyes blaze down at me: this man loved my mother. It’s plain as day. Did he love the woman she became, sad and broken, whose best still wasn’t enough? Because that’s the unfortunate truth about my mother: she tried. I really think she did. And she loved me. But love and trying hard were not enough. Sometimes those things are not enough. And is love more than the sum of its parts? If you lose all the parts of yourself that someone fell in love with, will they still love you? Is there a love that says simply I love you because you exist?
