Aside from myself, there was no sign of me.

These things are lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone taking the time to write it all down. That Litvinoff had a wife who was so devoted is, to be frank, the only reason anyone knows anything about him at all.

But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing?

The air felt different in my lungs. The world no longer looked the same. You change and then you change again. You become a dog, a bird, a plant that always leans to the left. Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food in the night it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.