The phone started ringing at about the same time the floorboards caught fire. There was smoke and voices, and I was walking into the bedroom and suddenly someone was telling me that my mother was dead. I’m not really sure what happened after that: Presumably, the plumber put out the fire he’d started while working on our pipes in the crawlspace. Presumably, I said some things, like, “When did it happen?” and “How can I help?” I do recall thinking that ordinarily, I would not have picked up a call at that hour. Any other week, I would have been on the phone with my friend in Chicago, chatting as we do every Friday. But I was sick, and my throat was sore, so I’d cancelled the call.

But of course, the hour didn’t matter. My mom had died in the morning, hours earlier, and whatever it was I should have felt at that moment — a sudden rushing of light and sound out of the world, a seismic shift in my soul — I didn’t feel it. I didn’t know. I should have known.

Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of books that deal with the death of loved ones, and in every one, the main character reacts sharply and immediately. She screams or falls to the floor. Something fragile is often dropped precipitously. For me, it’s like reading about other people visiting a country to which I have never been. They might talk about the scenery, the contours of the sand dunes, the bustling marketplace, and all I can think is: None of this relates to me. It is not at all like my own experience with grief. They are in Lichtenstein or Lebanon, someplace with a flag I would never recognize, and I am in my home, only something very subtle has changed. Were the sheets always that color? Didn’t we use to have curtains there?

Grief has been like stumbling through a fog. I’ll see something on TV and think, “I should tell Mom about that” at exactly the same moment I also think, “There is no Mom to tell.” I start crying at church, my nose running into my mask. I keep expecting something to happen (just as I did when my father died) — that she will come to me in my dreams with a message or appear to me in the form of a faun outside my window. But nothing like that happens. She’s just gone.

People say a lot of comforting things when they find out your mother has died. But my father-in-law said the best thing: “The hardest part of growing older is the loss of those you love.” That felt real to me. I want to believe (do, in fact, believe) the comforting phrases about where my mother is right now and how she is at peace, but it’s hard when the only empirical evidence I have is a void. Empty space. Trinkets: her patent leather purse, her jet earrings, a sweater that does not fit. Like me, my mother hated taking photos, so I only have a few. Not nearly enough.

I have her letters, written to me throughout my life, though I can’t bear to read them. Some day I will. But when I try to imagine the woman who will do this, she does not look anything like me. She looks like my mom. And that’s someone I’ll never be, or I wouldn’t miss her half so much.