In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.

When you don't know where you're headed, you find places no one else would ever explore.

Houses are cellular walls; they keep our problems from bleeding into everyone else's.

There's a cliff at the end point of a person's life; most us of peer over the edge of it, hanging on. That's why, when someone chooses to let go, it's so dramatically visible. The body will seem almost transparent. The eys will be looking at something the rest of us can't see.

That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills arrive in the mail, telemarketers, interrupt dinner.

What could you give me," I ask, my voice shaking, "to make me forget ... that you forgot about me?