Could It Ever Be Explained,

I Was The Basest Of Readers. All I Wanted Was My Own World, And Myself In It, Given Back To Me In Artful Shapes And Accessible Form.

Dying In Unfamiliar Surroundings Miles Away From Home, It Cannot Possibly Be Good. There Is A Great Sadness About That I Think.

From This New And Intimate Perspective, She Learned A Simple, Obvious Thing She Had Always Known, And Everyone Knew; That A Person Is, Among All Else, A Material Thing, Easily Torn, Not Easily Mended.

At The Back Of My Mind I Had A Sense Of Us Sitting About Waiting For Some Terrible Event, And Then I Would Remember That It Had Already Happened.

Four Or Five Years - Nothing At All. But No One Over Thirty Could Understand This Peculiarly Weighted And Condensed Time, From Late Teens To Early Twenties, A Stretch Of Life That Needed A Name, From School Leaver To Salaried Professional, With A University And Affairs And Death And Choices In Between. I Had Forgotten How Recent My Childhood Was, How Long And Inescapable It Once Seemed. How Grown Up And How Unchanged I Was.