"Mother died today. Or was it yesterday. I don't remember." These words start The Stranger by Albert Camus. So I recollect. As it turns out, the internet tells me I'm essentially right. It was most likely was the Penguin translation of the 1980s that I'm recalling.
I have thought about these words for many a decade whence I first read them. And on June 3rd of this year, if I had posted this then, they would have been accurate to me.
This whole little tale, those few sentences you have just read, is an odd compilation of the impression that literature left on the mind of a young man, the passage of time from that impression to the moment described therein, and a retrospective telescope back through time from that moment to that long ago initial impression.
Or in my case, Mother died today. Or was it yesterday. I don't remember.