My own mother.

I think this is the most important, and the most frightening, thing I have to say, because it is the mechanism underneath the whole tragedy, and it is a mechanism almost anyone can fall into without noticing.

The moment you begin to experience a person primarily as a function — as the one who does the childcare, or earns the money, or keeps the house, or holds the family together — you have already, without meaning to, stopped seeing them as a person, and a strange thing follows from that.

When a person you love falters, you feel fear for them.