“I was an idiot,” were my mother’s last words. I’ll never know what she meant because I wasn't there when she died. I am left with unanswered questions while I grieve for a woman I had barely spoken to during the last six months of her life. In fact, by the time I found out she had six months to live we’d been estranged for almost a year.”

“I’ve had a rough six months, okay?” she cried. “Little Blue was my last friend,and frankly the last time his batteries ran out I had a fleeting moment of panicthat he’d been compromised!”

“God, I loved her. She was the piece I had been missing for the last three months. She was everything I wanted in my life but was still unsure I deserved.”

“I found a Bill Evans record in the bookcase and was listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the record I had played in Naoko's room on the night of her birthday, the night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had happened only six months earlier, but it felt like something from a much remoter past. Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often-too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.”

“She wondered then if she had ever been on the right track. She had been reticent all her life, because it turned out that her opinions were different from what others expected. 'That proves either that I am an exceptional idiot, or the reverse.”

“I love you', though, were three words she had often heard during her twenty-two years, and it seemed to her that they were now completely devoid of meaning, because they had never turned into anything serious or deep, never translated into a lasting relationship.”