My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.

My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that couldn't be expressed with a card.

But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.

For sure, the funeral industry seems intensely cynical to me and I don't think it is HELPING people mourn.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

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.