Who is Mother from The Age of Wire and String and what is their importance?

Mother, also occasionally called "our mother" and referred to one time as "Mrs. Marcus," is usually the narrator's mother, although sometimes the term refers to a generic mother, similar to the case of "father" in the book. The mother, associated with the house, is characterized as warm, soft, and sweet-smelling. At home, people vie to cuddle with her. This characterization seems deliberately cliché and lacking in detail, as if the author's intention is to caricature the mother. Eventually, the reader realizes that the narrator's mother has died, just as Jason did, although no connection is drawn in the text between these two deaths. At one point, the narrator is digging with a shovel and he promises his mother that he will not dig near her, which suggests not only her death, but perhaps also the narrator's unwillingness to probe too deeply into his fond remembrances of his mother.