Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it's also to feel, quite powerfully, that you're not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief - that to do so would be taboo somehow.