Like my mother before me, I have always been a good speller.

A mother is the portal by which you enter the world.

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.

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.

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

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

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