Sometimes the way you think about someone isn't the way they actually are.

We are now as I wished we could be then.

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.

That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.

We landed, in fact, parallel to a canal, like there were two runways: one for us and one for waterfowl.

And as we kept driving north, the whole family in the care together, it got darker, and snowier, until finally the road delivered us to the one place that all my youthful trips west never could: home.

I know what happens a the end of falling-landing.