When I look back on this moment, I cannot say why this news did not destroy me. Never had I needed my mother’s touch so badly, and now I was being told I would never feel that touch again. For a brief moment, grief and panic exploded in my heart so violently that I feared I would go mad, but then a thought formed in my head, in a voice so lucid and so detached from everything that I was feeling that it could have been someone whispering in my ear. The voice said, Do not cry. Tears waste salt. You will need salt to survive.
