Just spend a few more months playing video games. That hand-eye coordination will come in handy when you get to third base.

It is saying these things that keeps us from falling apart. And maybe by imagining these futures we can make them real, and maybe not, but either way we must imagine them. The light rushes out and floods in.

In these pages, and in my memories, she reminds me that a short life can also be a good and rich life, that it is possible to live with depression without being consumed by it, and that meaning in life is found together, in family and friendship that transcends and survives all manner of suffering. As the poet wrote in the Bible's Song of Solomon, 'Love is strong as death.' Or perhaps even stronger.

For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.

That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created.

We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad.

Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you've got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse.