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

Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing.

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.

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.

And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore - we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail.