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My mother died on Christmas Day, at home, around three in the afternoon. In the first months afterward, I felt an intense desire to write down the story of her death, to tell it over and over to friends. I jotted down stray thoughts and memories in the middle of the night. Even during her last weeks, I found myself squirrelling away her words, all her distinctive expressions: “I love you to death” and “Is that our wind I hear?”
圣誕節那天大約是下午3點，我的母親在家中去世了。在隨后的第一個月，我有一種強烈的愿望要寫下她去世的故事，一遍又一遍告訴我所有的朋友。我將午夜無眠時零散的思緒和記憶隨手記下。甚至是在她活著的最后一個星期里，我尋找著我記得的她說過的，所有獨特的表達：“我愛你到死”和“那是我們聽過的風嗎？”
If I told the story of her death, I might understand it better, make sense of it—perhaps even change it. What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief. She had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer two and a half years earlier; I had known for months that she was going to die. But her death nonetheless seemed like the wrong outcome—an instant that could have gone differently, a story that could have unfolded otherwise. If I could find the right turning point in the narrative, then maybe, like Orpheus, I could bring the one I sought back from the dead. Aha: Here she is, walking behind me.
假如我講述了她死亡的故事，我可能更加熟悉它，理解它——甚至可能改變它，這一直讓我無法置信的事實。一個人明明存在于你所有的生命，突然有一天就消失了再不會回來。我更拒絕相信的是，她早在兩年半前已經被診斷出腸癌，而我，直到她快要死去的幾個月前才知道她的病情。但是她的死亡看起來像是一個錯誤的開始——或說是一段該特別的應該展開的故事情節。如果我能早點找到敘述關鍵的轉折點，那就可能，像奧菲士，能夠從死神手中尋回她。啊哈：她在這里，就在我身后。
It was my mother who had long ago planted in me the habit of writing things down in order to understand them. When I was five, she gave me a red corduroy-covered notebook for Christmas. I sat in my floral nightgown turning the blank pages, puzzled.
把有用的東西寫下來是我的母親很久前為了培養我的理解力形成的習慣。在我五歲圣誕節時，她給了我一個紅色的絨布封面的記事本，我穿著我像花朵一樣的睡裙翻開空白的頁面，感到困惑。
