“... the event itself is cloudy because of some primitive, numbing effect that obscured it at the time; the same effect, i suppose, that enables panicked mothers to swim icy rivers, or to rush into burning houses, for a child; the effect that occasionally allows a deeply bereaved person to make it through the funeral without a single tear. some things are too terrible to grasp at once. other things—naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror—are too terrible to really grasp at all. it is only later, in solitude, in memory, that realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself—quite to one's surprise—in an entirely different world.” — the secret history