When we got back to the flat in Queens, a lot of my father’s stuff was still there: his bathrobe, his cigar holder, his smell. There was no good evidence to allow the idea that he might never come back. He was just… away. This was not a lie or euphemism trotted out by the attending adults to buy time, to eventually explain this “death” thing. It was just my six-year-old understanding of it. He was not there, corporally, but he was very much there, on some other level that was beyond any sort of cognitive logic. He just had a different shape, an invisible one. (Location 45)
My sister and I shared one room, my mother and dead father, another. Our family ran grief like other people run marathons. To be respectably sad was to mourn for ever. (Location 49)
This may be one of the reasons I like to clean. I crave the memorabilia of others, for it tells a story I don’t really know. (Location 174)
