When love is gone, there's always justice./ And when justice is gone, there's always force./ And when force is gone, there's always Mom./ Hi, Mom!
—Laurie Anderson
Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to "outlive" them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.
—Joyce Carol Oates in A Widow's Story