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

Suddenly it was fall, the season of death, the anniversary of things-going-to-hell.

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

One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.

If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

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