Accept the past as past, without denying it or discarding it.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

I love you every day, Mom

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

You can't get stuck on what should have happened. That doesn't help you.

He almost told her everything right then, that very moment. But you grab a moment, or you let it pass. He let it pass.