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I do not imagine ever coming to terms with the loss of her body—her warm, welcoming body.
The place I always felt at home.
My mother, you see, is the great lov...
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was her one, just like she was mine.
how unused to discomfort we both are. We do not know how to live a life that the bottom has fallen out of.
The best one was mine, and now she’s gone.
I am overcome with how little I have left, how second-best every single other thing is.
“The money will come,” she’d always say. “You’ll never regret the experience.”
The only person who would know how to handle her death is gone.
We are missing our center.
Now I am simply a stranger.
“In time, you will discover.
I miss her I miss her I miss her.
I miss having the answers, because I had her.
It seems impossible she is nowhere.
lost to the Time Before.
What if we never got to where we were trying to go because we were so comfortable where we were?
‘What got you here won’t get you there.’
“That the same set of circumstances, beliefs, actions that got you to a moment won’t get you to what comes next. That if you want a different outcome, you have to behave differently. That you have to keep evolving.”
I think about how many times I’ve asked myself that. If I’ll ever feel normal again. If I’ll ever be okay.
That maybe, given time, I get to choose.
“There is more to life than just continuing to do what we know.”
There is more to life than just continuing to do what we know. What got you here won’t get you there.
“The difference between being good and bad at something is just interest,”
“It’s possible actions only have the weight we give them,” she says. “We can decide what something means.”
I don’t think bad action makes you a bad person. I think life is far more complicated than that, and it’s reductive to think otherwise.”
I don’t even know who I am anymore.
“You can’t judge someone’s life until you have lived it,”
“History is an asset, not a detriment. It’s nice to be with someone who knows you, who knows your history. It will get even more important the longer you live. Learning how to find your way back can be harder than starting over. But, damn, if you can, it’s worth it.”
History, memory is by definition fiction. Once an event is no longer present, but remembered, it is narrative. And we can choose the narratives we tell—about our own lives, our own stories, our own relationships. We can choose the chapters we give meaning.
To an old life that is new now.
You will learn, I hear her say.
The present is relentless. It forces us over and over again to pay attention.