A Bigamist's Daughter Quotes

“I had read stories, novels, seen manuscripts, seen movies on TV and in the theater, it's almost a cliche, but if cancer can be said to have any compensations, surely that is it: the final meetings, the wait together. The moment when the mother, while peeling potatoes or sorting clothes or setting her hair for the trip to the hospital, says some simple word or tells some new story and the daughter sees, for all of her life, what the love between them has been.

The days when the daughter, waiting at the hospital, reviews her own life, and taking her mother's frail hand says, "Thank you" or "I'm sorry," or simply "Mother, I'm here. Don't worry, I'm here."

If cancer can be said to have any compensations, surely it is in the cliche of time allowed. Time to say what can no longer wait to be discovered. Time when death is not merely a thought to put your teeth on edge, to be dismissed with a swallow, when life is marked clearly by beginnings and endings, by spoken words that mean something and change everything.”
― Alice McDermott, A Bigamist's Daughter