The musician, 45, talks about putting down roots, losing her mother, playing music and and how middle age has been a transformative time

My first memory is my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] singing to me. It was the song Go Tell Aunt Rhody, which is about a goose dying and the gander being depressed. Very morbid. I was very little. I remember her hand softly caressing my arm while she sang it to me. It’s a lovely memory. It’s a sad song, even a scary one. But it was comforting.

I’m still grieving for my mother. I’m very much in it. She’s been gone over 10 years now, but I wear a lot of her clothes, I live in the house she lived in and I sing her songs. Her dying at 63 has defined me in lots of ways. I was only 33 when I lost her. But this year I’ve been thinking about it differently. Dying young means that you’re saved years of old age. There’s a lot of suffering in old age. That’s been helping me to think like that.