The dinosaur was not stuff.

The dinosaur was Leo — was the exact worn softness his small hands had loved smooth, was the last object on earth that still held the shape of his holding.

And some part of me that was still functioning beneath the grief understood, without needing to be told, that if I saved nothing else, I had to save that.

I think this is what people mean, or ought to mean, when they talk about a mother’s instinct.

It is not only the instinct to protect a living child.

It is this, too — the instinct, even in the wreckage, even when the child is gone, to reach through the rubble and rescue the thing that still carries him, and to guard it with your body.