Death and loss, they plague you. So do memories. Like the Mississippi's incessant slap against the levees, they creep up with deceptive sweetness before grabbing your heart and pulling it under.

But there is room now in my heart for more memories, carved by a letting go that I could find only by coming home to a place I'd never been.

Every woman needs a daughter to tell her stories to.

To give up too easily leads to regret, yet trying and then failing can lead us to second chances if we do not accept it as a failure, but a chance to learn.

Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her -- the only memory I allowed myself to keep.

There are no completely good or bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, or bad choices. It's how we live with them that make us the people we are.

They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.