There's no such thing as a lost cause.

On the horizon, he saw the full moon. God dropped it there, he was sure, as a reminder of our small place in the world. A reminder that what is beautiful is fleeting.

In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.

That is the inescapable math of tragedy and the multiplication of grief. Too many good people die a little when they lose someone they love. One death begets two or twenty or one hundred. It's the same all over the world.

And I was even beginning to think home might be with you.

How many boys like him were out there in the ether, holding on to their big brothers and sisters who were still alive? How many husbands were floating between life and death, clinging to their wives in this world? And how may millions and millions of people were there in the world like Charlie who wouldn't let go of their loved ones when they're gone?

...like the 75 billion souls who lived before him, each and every one a treasure, he, too, will die.