When I cried, my mom said in a matter-of-fact but not unkind voice I’ve carried in my brain throughout my life, “People die, Sam. That you can count on.” My mother had a way of simultaneously talking to me as both a child and an adult. It could be harsh sometimes, but there was a stickiness to her lessons. “We’re odd, we humans,” she would say. “We know people die, but we act astonished when it happens. What is astonishing about death is our certainty that it isn’t going to happen to us or anyone we know without some kind of warning. And, we live our life doing stupid things like gossiping,
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