In the Midst of Winter

by Isabel Allende

She missed sex, romance, and love. The first of these she could obtain every so often, the second was a matter of luck, and the third was a gift from the gods that would probably never happen, as her daughter had told her more than once.

In her mother’s last days, Lucia understood that death was not an end, was not the absence of life, but a powerful oceanic wave of clear, luminous water that was carrying her off to another dimension. Lena was loosening her ties to the earth, letting herself be borne on the wave, free of any anchor and the weight of gravity; light, a translucent fish driven on by the current. Lucia no longer struggled against the inevitable, and relaxed.

“ ‘In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer.’ ” “Did you just think of that?” “No. It’s by Albert Camus.”