It’s funny because the crystal is pretty. Quite pretty. So, when I stumble across it, nestled in the carpet at the top of the stairs, my first thought is of its beauty. It is white and very clear. Sharp edges. It could have been a sugar crystal. Or it could have been a crystal grown with a kit like the one he got for his birthday when he was little. It had that look. But of course, it’s not that kind of crystal.

He wakes within subways. I rise from bed. Damp floors soil his soles. Rugs ease mine. I pick and choose among possessions for what I’ll need today: a notebook, pen and wallet in a parka’s leftward pocket with my cellphone on the right. A crunched recycled shopping bag for groceries curls in my black cloth glove. All that he’s assembled along his arduous life’s journey stuff a wire shopping cart from which his duck’s gait grows.

The final days with my mother were interesting. “Interesting” has become an interesting word to me. It’s almost always said as a polite way of saying “bad” or “not for me.” The day-to-day visits with my mother were rarely the same. Some fine. Some difficult. Always, in a good sense, interesting.

It is 7 o’clock in the morning, as usual. On my desk, piles of books and notepads are scattered around the spot where my breakfast—a cup of coffee and a piece of toast topped with a sunny-side-up egg—sits. I’m reading a page from Haruki Murakami’s story “The Wind Cave” in The New Yorker, while Taiwanese pop songs play softly on the computer.