I knew by then that I would never have my mother back, not in the way I had known her all my life. When you have seen your mother shattered, there’s no putting her back together. There will always be seams, chipped edges, and clumps of dried glue. Even if you could get her to where she looks the same, she will never be stronger than a cracked plate. I climbed into bed beside her and closed my eyes, but I never relaxed enough to forget who I was and what had happened to us.

“I don’t trust people who expect you to share and don’t share back. That wasn’t going to work with me. So, I didn’t say shit to Monya. What could Monya do for me? She could never understand the pain. She could never understand what was happening to me because she would never be in my shoes. For more than a decade, I’ve stayed quiet about my thoughts on this thing.

A metaphor is useful only for transforming what happens, enriching it in some way. It never tells you what actually happened, how it happened, or why it happened.

I couldn’t latch on to a thought and then be carried by it as it moved into new territory. To do that, I think you need a narrative self inside you connecting you with experience, telling you how you fit into the subjective encounter with what you’re seeing and attaching whatever significance it might hold for you.

I am reminded of what Einstein said on the death of his friend: He has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion.