My mother’s last letter arrived three months after her death. When I opened the postbox and collected the day’s mail, among all the letters from the bank and the advertising leaflets, I was surprised to see an envelope with my address printed in block letters. I read the opening sentence (that unusual and unsettling “Dear Son”) and turned the handwritten page over. I confirmed that the message ended with the nervous, Gothic features of my mother’s signature, picked up the envelope again and searched for a return address, but there wasn’t one.

To begin with, I calculated she must have posted the letter shortly before dying and the letter had been sitting in post offices for the last three months, but when I paid attention to the postmark, I realized the letter had suffered no delay between being deposited in a postbox in Pontevedra and reaching my hands in London. At this point, I started to think that the paper I held in front of me was a posthumous act with which my mother intended to interfere in my life.

I had to admit, as well, that this gesture was quite in keeping with the attitude I had observed in her during the last months of her life. Something that had arisen as a result of her learning about her illness. I remember when she told me, she did so without any of the petty insults or fierce ironies with which she was in the habit of rebuking my decisions. This time, she opted to call me in London and ask in a serene voice when I was planning to pay her a visit. Given that she didn’t reveal her motive or even hint that the question contained an element of urgency, I postponed the meeting for another month.

When I finally paid her a visit one weekend, the message with which she received me was like a whiplash across the back.

“I only have a few months to live,” she informed me in a neutral, almost distant tone, as if referring to someone she didn’t hold in high esteem.