I watched my beautiful sister running . . . and I knew she was not running away from me or toward me. Like someone who has survived a gut-shot, the wound had been closing, closing - braiding into a scar for eight long years.

As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.

Every day a question mark.

She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.

His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.

I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.

I have never been shy about listening to the input of others and weighing it seriously.