I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.

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

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

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.

Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us.

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

Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.