When the word 'nostalgia' was coined in the 18th century, it was used to describe a pathology - not so much a sense of lost time, but a severe homesickness.

I try to make a point of being seen. Sometimes when I'm out, I'll buy a juice even when I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded I'll even go so far as dropping change all over the floor, nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. All I want is not to die on a day I went unseen.

Later - when things happened that they could never have imagined - she wrote him a letter that said: When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything

And so he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he picked up his hat and walked away.

I finally understood that no matter what I did, or who I found, I-he-none of us-would ever be able to win over the memories she had of Dad, memories that soothed her even while they made her sad, because she'd built a world out of them she knew how to survive on even if no one else could.

The oldest emotion in the world may be that of being moved; but to describe it-just to name it-must have been like trying to catch something invisible.

There were many things they simply didn't talk about: between them, silence was not so much a form of evasion as a way for solitary people to exist in a family.