When The Lights Go Out Quotes
"I don’t have to see myself to know what I look like."
"There’s no one," I said to the doctor. "It’s only Mom and me."
"Sleep deprivation is a serious matter. You need to sleep."
"What I need instead is to stay awake, to be with Mom until she makes the decision to leave."
"It’s weak and there are grounds in it," he tells me, giving his abandoned cup the stink eye.
"My mother’s dying," I tell him, looking away.
"There’s nothing more you can do for your mom," he says.
"I’m not your patient," I remind the nurse but she says, "Close enough."
"The waiting is the hardest part," she tells me.
"By the looks of this, Jessie," she says, "you’re already dead."
"I hate it," I say, for the eighth or ninth time in a row.
"Is anyone there?" I call over the stairwell, my voice timid and afraid.
"I really need that birth certificate, ma’am," I say, shuffling in place.
"There were no records found," the woman says to me then.
"I can’t be dead because I haven’t yet been born."
"How can there be no birth certificate for me when clearly I’m alive?"
"Who’s to say you were even born in Illinois?"
"I do it so that she and I can both see I’m alive."
"The children were everywhere, and I started to wonder why something in so much abundance could ever be hard to achieve."
"No subject is too personal or too taboo to discuss."
"The debilitating effects of insomnia return to me then, suddenly and without warning."
"Because I’m nothing, I easily reasoned then, if not a mother."
"I didn’t want pity and I didn’t want advice."
"Feeling rebellious. Trying to fit in with the crowd but failing."
"Only time will tell is in essence what it means."
"I see Mom standing there before the teacher, making an introduction."
"The room is quiet as I lie in bed wondering what she looked like."
"A heavy silence flattens me in bed, filling every crevice in the room like a poisonous gas."
"I imagine her at the window, gazing out, seeing me lying on the mattress, pretending to sleep."
"You have no idea how stressful it is for me at work."
"I buried her beneath the trellis, which the snowdrift clematis had overtaken at this time of year."
"I don’t know that I could ever go back to one, not after what I’ve done."
"But every night around 3:00 a.m., when I’ve exhausted all the thoughts of death and grief and guilt for a single night, my imagination begins to take flight."
"The silence is almost a physical presence, heavy and suffocating."
"I make poor attempts to placate myself, to convince myself that the light is on a timer."
"I was grateful for this, for the fact that it wasn’t high enough to necessitate a visit to the emergency room."
"We planned a big dinner out for when the cancer was finally in remission."
"But there was a mandatory waiting period before the cremation could begin."
"I can’t believe I never found this place before."
"I’ve gained ten pounds now due to the many months of fertility treatments."
"And now here they are, exhibitionists in my flower bed, outshining the roses and lilies."
"The internet knows everything," she told me, emphasizing that word everything.
"You have no idea what I’m feeling. Don’t stand there and pretend you know what it’s like to lose a child."
"I’d give anything to go back to being Aaron and Eden. Just us. Just you and me," he said.