That somewhere in there, beneath the sedatives and the delirium, some steady part of her had held on, had remembered that she was loved, had remembered whose love had built the very walls around her even as she was made a prisoner inside them.

She had not forgotten me.

Even in the dark, she had not forgotten.

There is a thing I understand now about that phrase, even when it was dark, that I did not understand at first, and it has changed how I think about the whole ordeal.

My mother was telling me that the drugs had not reached all the way down.

That beneath the chemical fog, beneath the manufactured delirium, some core of her, some deep and steady bedrock of who she was, had remained intact and aware and holding on.