This ambiguity haunted me, so while still small I devised a plan, a kind of personal superstition. Every evening while being tucked in I would say to my parents, “Don’t forget! Don’t die!” and every evening my mother would say, “I promise!” and my dad, accuracy zealot that he was, would say, “I’ll do my best!” I don’t know if it was because he was already in his fifties by then and had faced several serious health problems, or just that he wouldn’t want to break a promise by falling victim to something he could not control. But this was our nightly ritual, and for a time, it gave me the
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