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My mother died on Christmas Day, at home, around three in the afternoon. In the first months afterward, I felt an intense desire to write down the story of her death, to tell it over and over to friends. I jotted down stray thoughts and memories in the middle of the night. Even during her last weeks, I found myself squirrelling away her words, all her distinctive expressions: “I love you to death” and “Is that our wind I hear?”
圣诞节那天大约是下午3点，我的母亲在家中去世了。在随后的第一个月，我有一种强烈的愿望要写下她去世的故事，一遍又一遍告诉我所有的朋友。我将午夜无眠时零散的思绪和记忆随手记下。甚至是在她活着的最后一个星期里，我寻找着我记得的她说过的，所有独特的表达：“我爱你到死”和“那是我们听过的风吗？”
If I told the story of her death, I might understand it better, make sense of it—perhaps even change it. What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief. She had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer two and a half years earlier; I had known for months that she was going to die. But her death nonetheless seemed like the wrong outcome—an instant that could have gone differently, a story that could have unfolded otherwise. If I could find the right turning point in the narrative, then maybe, like Orpheus, I could bring the one I sought back from the dead. Aha: Here she is, walking behind me.
假如我讲述了她死亡的故事，我可能更加熟悉它，理解它——甚至可能改变它，这一直让我无法置信的事实。一个人明明存在于你所有的生命，突然有一天就消失了再不会回来。我更拒绝相信的是，她早在两年半前已经被诊断出肠癌，而我，直到她快要死去的几个月前才知道她的病情。但是她的死亡看起来像是一个错误的开始——或说是一段该特别的应该展开的故事情节。如果我能早点找到叙述关键的转折点，那就可能，像奥菲士，能够从死神手中寻回她。啊哈：她在这里，就在我身后。
It was my mother who had long ago planted in me the habit of writing things down in order to understand them. When I was five, she gave me a red corduroy-covered notebook for Christmas. I sat in my floral nightgown turning the blank pages, puzzled.
把有用的东西写下来是我的母亲很久前为了培养我的理解力形成的习惯。在我五岁圣诞节时，她给了我一个红色的绒布封面的记事本，我穿着我像花朵一样的睡裙翻开空白的页面，感到困惑。
