All dead people should know this: They’re going to matter, even if they think they won’t and even if they don’t want to. I understand now that toward the end, my mother was so sick that she didn’t want to be part of this world any longer. She thought she could fade away. But her absence meant as much to me as her presence would have. Maybe my mom thought that she was being kind to me by leaving—that because she was gone I wouldn’t have to deal with having a crazy mother. But by leaving the way she did, my mother actually burdened me with the task that would come to define my young adult life:
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