The House of a Person who has just died

When one enters the house of a person who has just died, it’s hard to believe that it’s deserted. Houses don’t have ghosts, but they contain the effects of life’s final gestures. First I heard the rush of water from the kitchen and for a fraction of a second, with an abrupt torsion of the true and the false, I thought that my mother wasn’t dead, that her death had been merely the subject of a long, painful fantasy that had begun in some long time ago. I was sure that she was in the house, alive, standing at the sink, washing the dishes and murmuring to herself. But the shutters were closed, the apartment was dark.

 

Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love