Age 8
Your mother has a seizure on the front lawn after grocery shopping and you stand there wondering what you’ll have for dinner as a can of peas and a jar of sauce roll into the cul-de-sac where you ride your bike and play freeze tag. An ambulance swallows her. Eleven months later, you’ll watch her gleaming coffin lowered into the dull dirt and you’ll watch your father slowly spiral into relentless grief that lays waste to your house until the bank finally forecloses and you move from apartment to apartment to apartment…