And she was still, in every way that her mind could reach, entirely lost.

There is no word, that I know of, for the specific grief of being unremembered by someone you love.

We have words for death, and for absence, and for betrayal.

But this was none of those.

My mother’s body was warm and breathing in my bathtub.

Her heart still beat.

And yet the version of her that had held me, sung to me, saved change in a coffee can for my school shoes — the version that carried the memory of me — was gone as surely as if it had burned in that fire after all.

I was a stranger to my own mother.