After Elsie’s father was killed, her mother became strangely fixated with death. The more violent the end of someone’s life, the better. She once walked three miles in the pouring rain, to stare at a tree where a motorcyclist had been decapitated. “It’s important,” she said. “To look.” At first, I couldn’t understand why she would want to do something so intensely morbid, but then I realized it was a comfort to her. She liked to remind herself that God hadn’t just singled her out for tragedy alone. It happened to other people too. It somehow helped her to think we were all hurtling towards our
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