We're all more than the person we show to everyone else.

I closed my eyes and listened to the occasional chirps of tiny birds hidden in the trees around us, the bubbling of water over rocks down below, cicadas rattling a chorus off in the distance. All sounds of the world carrying on like it always had. So much could change or be lost, and still, the rest of the world went on like it was nothing. It didn't seem wrong, but it didn't seem right either. I'd gone on today like it was nothing. I'd laughed and felt happy and forgotten for a little while that this was now a world without my brother in it.

Nothing could be left to chance, because chance, after all, can be dangerous. But what I didn't realize all that time, what I missed all along, is that chance is everywhere. It's also what life is made of. It's all around us, but most of the time we never see it working.

It seems to me that the experiences that stay with you, the things you'll always remember, aren't the ones you can force, or go looking for. I've always thought of those things as the ones that somehow find you.

Life is made of moments and choices. Not all of them matter, or have any lasting impact Then there's a different kind of moment. One when things are irrevocably changed by a choice we make. A moment we will play endlessly in our minds on lonely nights and empty days So we explain it to ourselves, justify it enough to sleep. And then we bury it deep, so deep we can almost pretend it never happened. But as much as we wish it were different, the truth is, our worlds are sometimes balanced on choices we make and the secrets we keep.

That’s what seems the most sad to me—that neither of them even think there’s a possibility they can be together.

I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.