“How do we forgive ourselves? Our parents watch us so carefully when we’re children, desperate not to miss a first scream, a first step, a first word, never taking their eyes off us. Yet we do not watch them. They near the end in solitude – even those who live beside us die in solitude – and rarely do we catch their own milestones: the last scream before the morphine settles in, last step before they cannot walk, last word before the throat seals.”
