Though she'd try to do otherwise, she had never been able to stop cluttering her present with her past. Now somebody she didn't know would pack her treasures into plastic bags and carry them away. A life, at its end, is a pile of cloth and paper, and goods that can be bagged and labelled. None of the best things - the voice and the laugh, the tilt of the head, the things seen and felt and spoken - are allowed to stay behind.

Author: Sonya Hartnett