Please do not leave me, he thought. He could not bear a world without Alli. He realized how much he relied on her from morning until night. She was his only conversation. His only smile. She prepared their meager food and always offered it to him first, even though he insisted she eat before he did. THey leaned on each other at sunsets. Holding her as they slept felt like his last connection to humanity.

Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive." He smiled. "It helps you listen.

He cried that night for all that he had lost, but he would say it taught him a valuable lesson: that holding on to things "will only break your heart.

We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do. Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it. Learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others. Don't assume that it's too late to get involved.

We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.

the pain we suffer is a way to make us appreciate what comes next.