Over the last couple of weeks her mother went from hands-on caring to nearly vanishing after Kate’s death. It was too familiar. Grief ought to be debilitating, ought to bring the living, the loved, together in their sorrow. For Elin, to talk to her nieces meant taking their hand, to leave them alone in a room meant she had to first touch a shoulder, the top of a head, a knee. If her mother had cried Elin didn’t see it, and the only hugs she gave the girls appeared stiff and brief, a quick pat on the back at the door. Old habits die hard, emotional triggers like stubborn weeds, profoundly
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