Don't think or judge, just listen.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.

It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.

It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.

There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd kept it all this time. No matter what else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, because with this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too.

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.