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A year before my mother died, she heard her father call to her during the night. When I visited her in the nursing center, she said his voice was so clear that she answered and struggled to get up. This was the first sign that she would spend her final year of life in a twilight that blended past and present. At first I corrected her, but later I accepted her recollections of her day, about people—long dead—with whom she had chatted, and places—far away in time and distance—she’d visited.