“I used to drive out to the site of the accident all the time — a willow tree on Route 987. The last time I went the tree was still healing. The farmlands were a grim powdery blond in the white sun, and the earth was still ragged from winter. I sat there in my tiny Vega on the broken crumbly shoulder. The great tree and the land around — flat as a griddle for miles and miles — didn’t seem as fitting as I had once thought, not such a poetic place for two good lives to had stopped.”
In this passage, the narrator is talking about the death of her parents. Throughout the story, she is struggling with the will to live after her parents’ death. The narrator still visits the site of the accident, two and a half years later. The willow tree on Route 987 reminds her that she is now alone in the world. The woman wants to move on with her life, but she finds it difficult to even live after her parents’ death.