Story's End: Grief and Writing a Mother's Death

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.

“What do I do with it?” I wanted to know.

“You write down things that happened to you that day.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because maybe they’re interesting and you want to remember them.”

“What would I write?”

“Well, you’d write something like ‘Today I saw a woman with purple hair crossing Montague Street.’ ”

By Meghan O’Rourke, The New Yorker