It is hard to stop seeing your son as a son and to start seeing him as a human being. It is hard to stop seeing your parents as parents and to start seeing them as human beings. It's a two-sided transition, and very few people manage it gracefully.

You wanna-I dunno-get coffee or something sometime?" Justin smiled "Not coffee. But yes." "Not Coffee it is, then." "Yes, Not Coffee.

it's gonna hurt because it matters.

That air. The air afterwards. I wanted to breathe it in. It felt right to breathe it in. Because we were breathing them in, weren't we? And the building. We were breathing it all in. And I thought, there's a part of this that's actually a part of me now. I now have that responsibility. I am alive, and I am breathing, and I can do the things this dust can't do.

It is much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.

If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.

arrears, n. My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I though would go wrong, I never thought it would be that. "It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.