But When My Mother Died, I Found

What Had Happened Still Seemed Implausible. A Person Was Present Your Entire Life, And Then One Day She Disappeared And Never Came Back. It Resisted Belief.

And After My Mother's Death I Became More Open To And Empathetic About Other People's Struggles And Losses.

My Whole Life, I Had Been Taught To Read And Study, To Seek Understanding In Knowledge Of History, Of Cultures.

I Live To Collect Information, And I Am Also A Perfectionist.

Yet The Story Of Orpheus, It Occurs To Me, Is Not Just About The Desire Of The Living To Resuscitate The Dead But About The Ways In Which The Dead Drag Us Along Into Their Shadowy Realm Because We Cannot Let Them Go. So We Follow Them Into The Underworld, Descending, Descending, Until One Day We Turn And Make Our Way Back.