The Geography of Longing

Longing creates a place to speak to the dead. The mother’s longing to engage with Nikolai creates a space where the mother may share words with her dead son. She says she has made time irrelevant, but given the connection between time and space, space has been made irrelevant as well. Creating a new place for which the living can speak with the dead is surprising to both, but the mother says, “Many people don’t have to go to this extreme as I do so as not to lose someone” (29). Careful not to sound as if her sadness and longing is somehow greater than another’s, she notes, “I was almost like you, and that’s why I have allowed myself to make up this world to talk with you” (9). Here, the mother infers that she, too, wanted to end her...