My boy, in his thirties, sending money home from... I forget which city now, it’s always changing. And I feel… a melancholic inadequacy, if that's the phrase for it. Anyone else get this, the financial provision, but the physical absence is a kind of amputation? The remittances arrive, regular as clockwork, a testament to his diligence, his filial piety, but it's not a hug. Not a hand to hold when the days blur. Am I the only one who feels this odd dysphoria, this emotional dissonance, receiving so much, yet feeling a profound lack? After my own midlife dissolution, when friends performed their triage and disappeared, I learned about real solitude. This is different though. This is a ghost limb ache.