He rises over me, a second sun, and fills me with light and heat.

There is a fine line between seeing something that's lost as missing, and seeing it as something that might be found.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.

I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.

It makes Faith think of a hammock in their yard, a web of rope that she thought would unravel the first time she leaned back on it, but that managed to support her all the same.

I always wondered why God was supposed to be a father," she whispers. Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?

A photo says, you were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, you were so important to me that I put down everything else to come watch.