I didn’t recognise her. I know it has been a long time and it was only a photograph but she has clearly aged dramatically. It’s grief. I know this. She has been so shaken by the loss of the child, it has uprooted her to her soul. We want people to stay the same. It is a selfish need. I do it all the time, particularly to women. All those temporary and stand-in mothers. I want them to remain unshaken by life. I want them to remain strong, for me, when I am weak. It cannot be so. Not if they are good and if they love as she does. My heart breaks for all those women. I can think of three, four, maybe five that I know whose lives are not the same as they were. And their bodies carry the pain of those seismic cracks.
