Had she been struck down, at that time, by a ten-wheel truck, or a swift and incurable disease, I would have been one part relieved and three parts devastated; and for this there would have been funeral rituals, there would have been a language for the pain, a way for others to understand it. As it was, it never occurred to me to mourn her. Who would think to grieve a mother who was pulsatingly alive and daily appearing, Gorgon-like, at the other end of a dorm room telephone?
