I was struck at the death of both my mother and father how within only minutes of passing, their face was no longer them and yet it remained their face. After twenty-one I stole my face back from death but it was not my face. I saw bodies and faces that were me but which I hadn’t been allowed, rather this stranger’s body and face, like borrowed clothes at once too loose and too tight and smelling wrong. But there was nothing else to wear and so we got on with it, me and this ill-fitting costume that bears my name.
