I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.

A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother.

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.

I have seen that grief can be very different for different people. While the range of emotions experienced is similar, the way we deal with those emotions isn't, necessarily.

But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.

Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.