We think we can bury what we’ve lost under all the things we can buy. When the truth is, the loss that my mother can’t express to her mother is what I struggle to express to her now. The truth is, if Mama had known then what she knows now—that calling her on the phone is difficult, because I can’t really pretend that I know the voice on the other end of the line—that seeing her on Skype or FaceTime feels like some sort of twisted joke, exposing the reality that the technology that easily connects us has rendered the very borders that divide us even more visible—I’m not sure if she would have
...more
