Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
"...And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?
I have no photograph of her that's any good. I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. Yet the odd face of some stranger seen in a crowd this morning may come before me in vivid perfection the moment I close my eyes tonight. No doubt, the explanation is simple enough. We have seen the faces of those we know best so variously, from so many angles, in so many lights, with so many expressions-- walking, sleeping, laughing, crying, eating, talking, thinking-- that all the impressions crowd into our memory together and cancel out into a mere blur. But her voice is still vivd. The remembered voice-- that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child."
Read this book.
I have no photograph of her that's any good. I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. Yet the odd face of some stranger seen in a crowd this morning may come before me in vivid perfection the moment I close my eyes tonight. No doubt, the explanation is simple enough. We have seen the faces of those we know best so variously, from so many angles, in so many lights, with so many expressions-- walking, sleeping, laughing, crying, eating, talking, thinking-- that all the impressions crowd into our memory together and cancel out into a mere blur. But her voice is still vivd. The remembered voice-- that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child."
Read this book.