What are the motifs in Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler?

Death plays a big role in the minds and actions of Ira and Maggie throughout the novel. Maggie is especially propelled by her fear of death her sense of its looming presence. On the way to Max’s funeral, she thinks about how the concept of death is so difficult to apply to the people you know. In her mind she sees Max healthy and alive and she can’t imagine him just simply gone. At his funeral she sees the people she grew up with and went to high school with and she realizes they have been growing older just as she has. They have been married, aged, had children, and had children grow up and now they all sense their own kind of impending doom and they all try to escape from it in different ways, whether that be denial, plastic surgery, or escape through memories.