but accepting help doesn‟t have to mean giving up control.

If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.

It's not forever', she'd said, but to my mother, it might as well have been. She had make her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control.

I just do the best I can under the circumstances.

This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud. I should have been with him; she should have left him alone. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

There's just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

but accepting help doesn‟t have to mean giving up control.