My mother, Elaine, a woman of gentle strength and profound kindness, sat huddled on the front porch swing, weeping into the worn fabric of her old gardening coat. The swing, which had been the site of a thousand happy conversations, now moved with a slow, mournful creak. She was surrounded by a pathetic, scattered pile of her most cherished personal belongings: boxes of old, sepia-toned photographs, a small, worn sewing basket that had been her mother’s, and a single, heavy, overstuffed suitcase, its contents spilling onto the cold, unforgiving flagstones like the entrails of a life suddenly gutted.