Mary’s writing once again captures the truth behind a tragedy, and a terrible effort to tuck that truth away. This piece carries its weight quietly. It does not chase outrage or insist on conclusions; it bears witness. In doing so, it makes room for a loss that cannot be managed or explained away. A life is held in focus, not as an argument, but as something gone and therefore owed care, accuracy, and restraint.
Its urgency comes from that act of holding. From refusing to let a name slip into abstraction, or a death be smoothed into language that asks nothing of us. There is grief here, steady and unadorned, and a recognition that when we fail to stay with it, when we let the story move on too quickly, we make space for this kind of loss to happen again.
