Do I even have to say it?

I'm reading this NYRB essay by Lorrie Moore and I get to this passage:

Barbara dies at fifty-five—the halfway point of the book. Meghan O’Rourke has up until now proceeded with the vitality of a first-rate dramatist and her mother is a character well suited to it, equipped with an irrepressible spirit and a Christmas Day death, on a bed in the middle of the living room (so that death will be less “bureaucratic and fluorescent”), breaking the heart of everyone.

You know, what I'm going to say now, don't you? It's not about death or Christmas or writing style.