Get away from my house and all its rooms that echo, all the rooms I don't enter anymore.

No, I am not all right, I want to say. Have you been to my house? Have you seen how empty it is?

My mom was there to answer the unanswerable, to make sense of the fault in our life - and we got through that somehow; we came out on the other side. Now I'm 0 for 2 and I don't get any more pitches to swing at.

When someone you love has died, there is a certain grace period during which you can get away with murder. Not literal murder, but pretty much anything else.