It was like that. Sometimes I'd go for a period—days or weeks—without feeling the full sweep of my loss, and then as unexpected as a thunderclap, the realization would rip the protective coating from my senses. Maybe that's the way it is with trick knees and aging griefs. Totally pain free one moment and absorbingly painful the next.

Why is it I'm always so quick to believe that people are thinking...believing the worst about me?

And marking off time struck me as something like counting empty spaces—spaces you know can't ever be filled.

When people's emotions are involved they don't want to listen.

Fun, like champagne bubbles, can't completely fill you up.

Keep in mind that life produces no maestros, only students of varying shades of ineptitude.

I believe that love is better than hate. And that there is more nobility in building a chicken coop than in destroying a cathedral.