It is not that, or not only that.

In those first weeks it was more like a concussion.

I would walk into a room and forget why.

I would pick up the phone to tell Declan something small — a thing the baby had done, a noise the car was making — and get halfway through dialing before the floor dropped out again.

I answered the door for people bringing casseroles and could not, an hour later, have told you who had come.

The world had a thin, unreal quality to it, like a set built to resemble my life.