It was an obstacle with a pulse, a formality between them and the money, a thing to be processed.

And I lay there and took it all in, every word, and something strange happened as I did: the more casually they discussed erasing me, the clearer and calmer I became.

I had spent my life afraid of losing these people’s love.

Now I was hearing, in their own unguarded voices, that the love had never existed to lose — that I had spent thirty-four years earning the approval of people who were, at this very moment, pricing my funeral over my open eyes.

There is a terrible freedom in that.

You cannot be controlled by the fear of losing something you have just discovered you never had.