Sublime

‘Motherhood is an obliteration of the self,’

It personalized death, the faculty said, it restored dignity to the undignified process of dying.

The centre director made mollifying gestures. He tended to wear mollifying jumpers. Jumpers designed to reassure, to defuse tensions, to make the unlovable feel loved; jumpers with a whiff of Ted Hughes. ‘Of course,’ he said and, spreading his hands, ‘Look, there’s always someone.’ ‘Anyone else complain?’ I said. ‘Not really. Peter thinks the wine

There’d been nothing in our house that we’d had just because my mum liked it; nothing that stood as a memento of her human life, her life in Malaysia. Everything was about convenience, not her taste or personality.

Birth, death and grief