The person behind the role you have assigned your mother, or your father, is there right now, today, waiting to be asked.

Ask now.

Ask while there is still a lifetime left to hear the answers.

Chapter 18 — I Want to Go Home

By late autumn, her body began to fail more quickly, and one evening she called me into her room, and told me, in a voice barely above a whisper, that she wanted to go back to New Mexico.

“For a visit?” I asked, though I already knew.

She shook her head slowly, and I understood.