Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.

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.

How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual', I thought it was all crap.

If I had but an hour of love,if that be all that is given me,an hour of love upon this earth,I would give my love to thee.

I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

You look invincible,' my mother said one night. I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned to her, wrapped in my thin gown, and said: I am.