Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

Death is explaining that Death happens over and over, you have many lives, and at the end of each one (meaning life) is a woman who kills you and releases you into the next life. Gately can’t quite make out if it’s like a monologue or if he’s asking questions and she’s responding in a Q/A deal. Death says that this certain woman that kills you is always your next life’s mother. This is how it works: didn’t he know? In the dream everybody in the world seems to know this except Gately, like he’d missed that day in school when they covered it, and so Death’s having to sit here naked and angelic and explain it to him, very patiently, more or less like Remedial Reading at Beverly H.S. Death says the woman who either knowingly or involuntarily kills you is always someone you love, and she’s always your next life’s mother. This is why Moms are so obsessively loving, why they try so hard no matter what private troubles or issues or addictions they have of their own, why they seem to value your welfare above their own, and why there’s always a slight, like, twinge of selfishness about their obsessive mother-love: they’re trying to make amends for a murder neither of you quite remember, except maybe in dreams.