My mother left this world beset by baffling symptoms following nearly lifelong depression, anorexia, terror, insomnia, and untreated despair. For forty years, she had managed a gift shop. This (unlike me) was her only joy.

I spent those last weeks sitting by her bed, first at the hospital, then at the home where doomed patients were sent: we two alone, with staff occasionally drifting through, adjusting tubes.

She spent those weeks addressing persons only she could see.

At nearly six feet tall but 78 pounds, this wizened reed who spent my childhood cussing at herself in mirrors and teaching me, by example and instruction, how to hate myself now chatted brightly into what most would call empty space. Over the hum of medical machines, facing away as if I wasn’t there, she queried, nodded, winked, and waved.

"Did you have lunch? Was it Chinese?"

"She went right up to the North Pole."

"Max, which bread is best?"

"Joe, you have a midget dog."

Often she waved a hand as if in greeting or goodbye, or gestured widely as if serving food. Meanwhile, she never looked at me. It's as if I, not........

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