It was that I had already missed most of her living.

All those years I called her Mom and meant the person who takes care of things, there had been a whole entire human being in there, rich and particular and full of an inner life I never inquired after, waiting, I think, to be asked.

I got four months of her.

I could have had a lifetime.

And that is the specific regret I carry now, sharper even than the guilt of the accusation: not just that I failed to see her pain, but that I failed, for thirty years, to see her at all — and that it took her dying to make me curious about the woman who gave me my life.

Do not wait, is what I would tell anyone.