Sometimes I guess you need to lose everything before you realize what's really important.

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.

Sometimes hope is all we have, and to lose that is to lose all.

You ain’t dead yet, so you ain’t done.

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.

A great man once wrote, "Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire." If only I were as eloquent as Mr. de la Rochefoucauld...I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And I want you. And I need your kiss. And your touch on my skin like a man needs water. Always.

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