The Storyteller

by Jodi Picoult

There are all sorts of losses people suffer – from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.

‘It doesn’t matter what it is that leaves a hole inside you. It just matters that it’s there.’

That’s the paradox of loss: How can something that’s gone weigh us down so much?

It’s not the years in your life that count, but the life in your years.