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The memory starts with roses in a basket.

‘Why are you doing that?’

My father glanced down at me, a freshly cut rose stem in one hand, a pair of bright silver secateurs in the other.

‘So we can take them inside to your mother. She loves the roses.’

‘She likes the red ones best.’

‘That’s right.’ My father clipped another stem. ‘She does.’

‘But they’ll die now they’ve been chopped off.’

I must have sounded very serious as I said this because Dr Stanley Quinn stopped what he was doing and knelt down in front of me.

‘But if they weren’t chopped off, how would your mother see them?’

I thought.

‘We could take her a picture,’ I said.

‘And would that be the same?’

I thought again.

‘No.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘The roses are bright; they’re beautiful, but they don’t last very long. And that’s all right; it’s an important part of what they are.’

We took the roses inside.

o

My next memory is of the following winter, of being led into my parents’ bedroom to see my mother’s body, to say my last goodbyes.

I remember snow piled up against the windowpane and the blizzard blowing outside, but the room itself was still and quiet. Dust particles hung like stars, fixed points in unchanging space. My mother’s head looked so light on her pillow; she seemed to be barely there at all.