And then he smiles, and in all the places around the globe where it's night, day breaks.

Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath.

How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?

What kind of world is this? And what do you do about it? What do you do when the worst thing that can happen actually happens?

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of peopleMaybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time. Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.

I don't know how the heart withstands it.

I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?