What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness {the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age}, regret for time gone by, for things unsaid, for my inability to share or even in any real way to acknowledge, at the end, the pain and helplessness and physical humiliation they each endured. I understood the inevitability of each of their deaths. I had been expecting {fearing, dreading, anticipating} those deaths all my life. They remained, when they did occur, distanced, at a remove from the ongoing dailiness of my life.
( Joan Didion )
[ The Year of Magical Thinking ]
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