A Spool of Blue Thread

by Anne Tyler

“The trouble with dying,” she’d told Jeannie once, “is that you don’t get to see how everything turns out. You won’t know the ending.”

A Baltimore woman I used to know, who was approaching 100 when I met her and had a generally feisty nature, used to tell people who marveled at her age that she absolutely refused to die before she found out how things ended. I laughed, but I knew what she meant. I thought it might have to do with being a mother: we spend so long fantasizing about our children’s perfect happiness that we start believing we might guarantee it if only we could stick around long enough.