News at Eleven: If a tragedy occurs to a person early

in their life it can, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in damaging ways, tie them to that moment in their lives for ever. I think that happened to me. I left home early, had an independent life and I try to do things in the world. I haven't wanted to be defeated by it. But I felt it was the absolutely central thing in my emotional make-up. And then--which I hadn't expected to happen--the very day my father died, 40-odd years later, I felt my mother depart from me and her presence in me changed. She didn't disappear. But she stopped being the default setting in everything I thought about. [--Andrew Motion]

from The Guardian: Andrew Motion: a life in writing

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