Page 1087 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"How can you say that?" demanded Novinha, furious. "How do you know what I need?"
"You know it yourself. You knew it when you came here. You knew it when Estevao died in the embrace of that rogue fathertree. Your children were leading their own lives now and you couldn't protect them and neither could Ender. You still loved him, he still loved you, but the family part of your life was over. You didn't really need him anymore."
"He never needed me."
"He needed you desperately," said Valentine. "He needed you so much he gave up Jane for you."
"No," said Novinha. "He needed my need for him. He needed to feel like he was providing for me, protecting me."
"But you don't need his providence or his protection anymore," said Valentine. Novinha shook her head.
"Wake him up," said Valentine, "and let him go."
Novinha thought at once of all the times she had stood at graveside. She remembered the funeral of her parents, who died for the sake of saving Milagre from the descolada during that first terrible outbreak. She thought of Pipo, tortured to death, flayed alive by the piggies because they thought that if they did he'd grow a tree, only nothing grew except the ache, the pain in Novinha's heart-- it was something she discovered that sent him to the pequeninos that night. And then Libo, tortured to death the same way as his father, and again because of her, but this time because of what she didn't tell him. And Marcao, whose life was all the more painful because of her before he finally died of the disease that had been killing him since he was a child. And Estevao, who let his mad faith lead him into martyrdom, so he could become a venerado like her parents, and no doubt someday a saint as they would be saints. "I'm sick of letting people go," said Novinha bitterly.
"I don't see how you could be," said Valentine. "There's not a one of all the people who have died on you that you can honestly say you 'let go.' You clung to them tooth and nail."
"What if I did? Everyone I love has died and left me!"
"That's such a weak excuse," said Valentine. "Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone. You continued your parents' work, and Pipo's, and Libo's-- and you raised Libo's children, didn't you? And they were partly Marcao's children, weren't they? Something of him remained in them, and not all bad. As for Estevao, he built something rather fine out of his death, I think, but instead of letting him go you still resent him for it. You resent him for building something more valuable to him than life itself. For loving God and the pequeninos more than you. You still hang on to all of them. You don't let anybody go."