Near the end I asked him one night in the hospital corridor what he thought was happening, and he said, "Tell her everything you haven't said," and I smiled with relief. "There's nothing," I said. "I've already told her everything.

the mother's first job is to raise a daughter strong enough to outlast her.

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.