In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

“‘Go on, girl,’ she said. ‘You get used to it.’”

When she notices the narrator’s unease with the monitoring hospital camera, the friend reassures her it’s possible to acclimate to such intrusion. The remark, though brief, is revealing: She is habituated to a highly unnatural environment, which—in addition to her illness—is an alienating experience that language could never directly impart to another person. Her inurement to the surveillance underscores her psychological remoteness from the narrator, who, in contrast, is clearly perturbed.

“‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said, ‘A parable.’”

A parable is a story that usually imparts a lesson or moral. The friend speaks these words when the protagonist first shares the story of the sign-language-using chimp that uses sign language. The story’s ending circles again to the chimp’s story, which truly holds a moral for the reader: Communicate your love to others while there’s still time.

“But now I’m doing it—and hoping that I live through it.”

The narrator recounts an anecdote from a friend who worked in a mortuary: A man survived a car accident but died when he saw his visible arm bone. This grim episode suggests that one’s survival often depends on an ability to ignore, avoid, or deflect. The narrator implicitly parallels the story to her situation: In closely examining her friend’s illness and the narrator’s response to it, her own character flaws may be fully exposed, and she may not be able to live with herself.