Sometimes, we find ourselves identifying with characters. Too many times, we wish we couldn’t.

How do we forgive ourselves? Our parents watch us so carefully when we’re children, desperate not to miss a first scream, a first step, a first word, never taking their eyes off us. Yet we do not watch them. They near the end in solitude - even those who live beside us die in solitude - and rarely do we catch their own milestones: the last scream before the morphine settles in, last step before they can walk, last word before the throat seals. Still I can feel it, the sudden drop of the heart - that I would crack the world open if I could, that I would sell my bones to have her back. - The Confessions of Max Tivoli

3000 miles.