The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of lossโyou have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "โthree," and years later, "Three," she will say, "โfour.
Amy HempelI sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
Amy HempelWhen my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.
Amy HempelIt was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.
Amy Hempel