The author and her mother, in Connecticut, circa 1992.
“Will I live to see its end?” your mother asks.
She is sixty-nine years old and lies in the hospital room where she has been marooned for the past eight years, shipwrecked in her own body.
“It” is the story that you are now writing—this beginning you have yet to imagine and the ending she will not live to see.
Write as if you were dying, Annie Dillard once said.
But what if you are writing in competition with death?
What if the story you are telling is racing against death?
In your dreams, you are always running. Running to catch your mother, running to intercept her before she reaches the end.
In your dreams, your mother has no legs, no arms, no spine—no body. She is smooth and pure, a sheet of glass that becomes visible only when it breaks. At which time she disintegrates into smaller and smaller pieces until you are whispering to a sliver on the tip of your finger. That fine fleck of her. What is a mother? you ask. Is this still a mother? Is that?
Your mother, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, speaks with her eyelids, using the last muscles over which she exercises twitchy control.
Esta historia es de la edición June 12, 2023 de The New Yorker.
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Esta historia es de la edición June 12, 2023 de The New Yorker.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.