I was eight years old when my mother died. We lived in a modest double-story house a mile off the coast of a Florida beach. It was the middle of one particularly humid night, and I was going downstairs to get a glass of water. I didn't see anything coming. All I could feel was gray. I hadn't thought anything of it. I was barely awake. Gray wasn't unusual for the middle of the night. And she didn't even scream.