Perhaps she intended to look back on it years later and say, "That's where it began, my new life.' I am struck with the thought that this is what she must have meant to do: document herself as a woman come this far, the rest of her life ahead of her.
-- Natasha Trethewey (Prologue paragraph 1)

Importance: Trethewey often looks at the last photograph taken of her mother, a studio portrait, and imagines what she might have been thinking at that time. She wonders if she had any idea that her life would be tragically cut short, or if she believed that she had escaped Joel and she was starting over again. Either option, presumably, would be upsetting in its own way, but this goes to show there is so much Trethewey does not know about her mother's final days—so much she will never know.

The young woman I'd become, walking out of that...
-- Natasha Trethewey (Prologue paragraph 1)