Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.

The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.

A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.

I'm in love with hope.

No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you.

By now, the morning sun was just over the horizon and it came at me like a sidearm pitch between the houses of my old neighborhood. I shielded my eyes. This being early October, there were already piles of leaves pushed against the curb—more leaves than I remembered from my autumns here—andless open space in the sky. I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while is how much the trees have grown around your memories.