The point is that my mother’s obituary was only seventy-four words long. I counted. I counted when I saw it in the newspaper. I didn’t understand how her life could be reduced to seventy-four words. Words that made no mention of how she loved the beach or how she did a little hip shake when a song she liked came on the radio in the kitchen or how she hummed when she was happy, how she leaned over the toaster on cold winter mornings as she waited for the bread to pop up, the warmth on her face, the smell of slightly burnt bread, turning to me and smiling, raising her eyebrows twice, our little
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