I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not." I don't know how to respond to that; it's like being told after thirty-five years that the sky, which I've seen as a brilliant blue, is in fact rather green.

When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?

You figured that the only way I'd be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.

I realized it was like looking into the sun—you shouldn't do it, because you'd turn your face away and be blind to everything else.

There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.

Sometimes to get what you want the most, you have to do what you want the least.