It took me about 23 years to cry after the day my father died and my relatives came to our place wearing sunglasses and I hid in the bathroom and cried in the tub (I was ten). What’s funny is they all probably had to go to the bathroom. They had traveled about an hour to get there. 23 years later, outside of the San Francisco Symphony with a girlfriend and a best friend, I weeped for 30 minutes without stopping in front of the hall on Van Ness.

My mother died a couple of years ago, and there have been a few brief grief-stricken moments, but I expect an emotional culmination. We love deeply. And it breaks our heart that we cannot curtail these events.

I loved and needed my dad. I have been lost my entire life without him. My mother and I were twins. Think of Bigger Thomas yelling at his mom, when he found out that her boss, as she cleaned other people’s houses, treated her badly. Thomas, a fictional character, was a huge refrigerator of a man caught up with grief that someone would treat his mother badly, that he yelled at her for putting herself in that position.

She gave everything to her family and what little they had. But, he was sad that he was powerless to help her because he knew there was no retribution. He saw the futility of his position. He would later act out his frustrations by horribly killing his girlfriend, who was pregnant, and trying to burn her body when he could foresee his own suppression of freedom. She was sweet and innocent too.