One Word I Had Throughout The First

Grief Is A Bad Moon, A Sleeper Wave. It's Like Having An Inner Combatant, A Saboteur Who, At The Slightest Change In The Sunlight, Or At The First Notes Of A Jingle For A Dog Food Commercial, Will Flick The Memory Switch, Bringing Tears To Your Eyes.

Loss Doesn't Feel Redeemable. But For Me One Consoling Aspect Is The Recognition That, In This At Least, None Of Us Is Different From Anyone Else: We All Lose Loved Ones; We All Face Our Own Death.

I Was Not Raised With Religion, And I Had No Faith Before My Mother Died. On The Other Hand, When She Died, I Did Not Immediately Feel She Was "gone." I Don't Believe She Is In Something Like Heaven, But I Also Feel That We Don't Understand Much About The Nature Of The Universe. So I Hold On To That Uncertainty, At Times.

My Theory Is This: Women Falter When They're Called On To Be Highly Self-conscious About Their Talents. Not When They're Called On To Enact Them.

Nothing Prepared Me For The Loss Of My Mother. Even Knowing That She Would Die Did Not Prepare Me.