Sublime

Somehow the concept didn’t occur to me, even when I saw people my own age die. I had a white coat on; they had a hospital gown.

covetous

absurdly smoky motsuyaki restaurants,

Death was in every fibre of these creatures. It was hidden in their languages and at the root of their civilizations. You

As his father lay on this plain bed in the sanatorium by the shore, at the same time he might very well be surrounded by scenes and memories invisible to others, in the still darkness of a back room in his own vacant house.

palliative,

despondency.

A short distance away from the body, I saw his spirit sitting on the branch of a pine tree. He looked like a puff of smoke emerging from a chimney on a cloudy day. Where ya going? he asked. To find my parents. No point in that, he muttered. They’re all dead.

Because she saw that he was, in essence, alone. In his vast solitude she would find hers—and with it, the freedom her overbearing parents had always denied her.