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But the first step in healing after any tragedy is to look our pain in the eye and accept the fact that it’s a part of who we’ll be going forward.
digging deep, letting yourself cry it all out, until it can’t hurt you anymore. You’ve never done that work. And you need to. We all need to.”
We can only bury our pain so long before it finds its way out. And in my experience, the longer we wait, the messier it gets.”
I don’t think you have moved on. If you had we’d be able to talk about it. But you won’t even let me say his name, Mallory. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s moved on. It sounds like someone who can’t.” “I left town, Mother. In fact, I left the state. The last time I checked, that is the literal definition of moving on.” “No. That’s changing your address. It’s not the same thing.”
All that matters is that the songwriter has something to say and knows how to say it in a way that will make people listen. That’s what real music does. It gets people to listen long enough for you to say what you have to say. It doesn’t have to be some lofty thing played by a string quartet. It just has to reach people, to speak to them.”
“For most of us, there’s someone—one person—whose soul we know as well as our own. The one we’re meant for. The one who’s meant for us. We know it the minute we meet them. We feel it. A recognition we sense in our bones. And it never goes away . . .” She paused, blinking away a sudden shimmer of tears. “Even when they do.”
There’ll be memories—hard ones—but it’s time to come out of hiding, sweetheart. Think of it as a kind of . . . coming-out party. You can do this. You’ll see. You’re braver than you think.” “I don’t want to be brave. I want to send a nice gift and stay home.” “I know. But you can’t.”
“Love doesn’t stop, sweetheart. Not when it’s real. Infatuation, passion, those things burn themselves out in time. But when you find that soul-deep connection with someone, it’s forever.”
Every love is different because every person is different—and they make us different when we’re with them.
“You don’t have to stay late but you need to make an appearance. That’s how you shut them up. You walk in with your head held high, you grit your teeth, and you just keep smiling.”
It was only ever you The one who came and found me The one who somehow knew All I had inside me, all that I could do The only song for me That was ever really true Was only ever you, only ever you.
“There’s an old saying,” I tell her gently. “A burden shared is a burden halved.
none of us know how much time we have left. The important thing is to use what we do have wisely—and meaningfully.”
“It feels unfair right now,” I say evenly. “When there’s so much left to do. You feel cheated. But death isn’t a punishment, Estelle. It’s a part of life. You can’t see it yet, it’s too soon, but knowing we’re nearing this part of our journey can actually be a gift, a chance to start again from where we are now, but better equipped this time. We’re reminded to spend the time we have left on what’s truly meaningful, to lay down the things we can’t control—things we finally realize we’ve never controlled—and live in the moment. We start looking back instead of always ahead, and feel a profound
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Beauty—and the vanity that sometimes comes with it—is often confused with dignity. But that kind of beauty is never more than skin deep, while dignity is rooted in our humanity, in our very soul, a birthright we either cling to or surrender.
“It feels a little dark. Not very tourist friendly.” “Maybe, but it feels authentic. The sun doesn’t shine all the time. Storms come. Things get dark.”
This is the business of dying well. The sorting out of what’s worth the fight and what’s not. The peeling off of old resentments. The laying down of arms. It’s a time of reckoning, of balancing our books and paying those we owe.
when done well, with clear eyes and an open heart, we learn to cherish those last precious days, and perhaps even to be grateful. We realize at long last that life in this world is finite, and with our wicks beginning to burn low, we cast about for other sources of light. For memory and meaning. For love stripped of need or wound. Pure, perfected, peaceful. This is transition. Not a fight, but an easing, an embrace of the eternal, of who and what we will be on the other side. Complete.
she’s a mother whose child is in pain, and I suspect she knows some of that pain can be laid at her door.
Motherhood doesn’t come with a set of instructions. Sometimes, the box arrives damaged and some of the pieces are missing. But you own it now, this job you weren’t ready for, and so you muddle through. You make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones, and there’s nothing to do but live with them.”
“If I could give you one piece of advice, Mallory, one thing to remember always, it’s to never allow silence to come between you and someone you love.”
Life hands us all our share of regrets. Don’t live with the ones you don’t have to. Mend your fences while you can—as soon as you can. If someone needs you, be there, whatever it costs. Because you might not get another chance.”
Mallory nodded, but chose to stay silent. She knew the fastest way to get him to open up was to let the quiet spool out until he felt compelled to fill it. Nature abhorred a vacuum. So did angry people—and Aiden was simmering, doing his best to tamp down his anger because he was afraid of it. Ultimately the need to vent would win out.
“Mothers are complicated. You grow up thinking you know who they are. And then something happens and you realize they have all these layers, pieces of themselves you didn’t know were there—because they’ve been carrying around stuff you knew nothing about. But maybe it goes the other way too. Maybe mothers don’t always see their children as they really are.
“Closure is a good thing, Aiden, even when the ending isn’t what we want. Maybe especially then. Because it helps us move on to what’s next—even when we don’t know what’s next.”
“It’s just funny the things we believe when we’re kids. We take them as gospel because we don’t know any better. Then we grow up and we find out it isn’t the way we thought at all—that nothing is. Things are always falling apart, and most of the time there’s nothing we can do about any of it.”
always was a dangerous word. It was a promise, easy to make in the moment but ultimately harder to keep.
“People who lie always have some excuse. They claim to be protecting someone else when they’re really just protecting themselves. They never bother to think about what will happen when the truth comes out. And of course it does. But by then the damage is done, trust is broken.”
it didn’t matter how many years or miles you put between yourself and a thing. The memories were always there. Because you never really left them behind. They traveled with you, like shadows, determined to be noticed, to be dealt with.
Every human on the planet had a story they told themselves, about who they were and where they came from, stories that tethered them to the world. They created a kind of context, a landscape for living. But without those stories, the world became unshaped—and then the storyteller became unshaped.
Mothers aren’t supposed to have yesterdays. To our children, we’re blank slates, patiently awaiting their appearance so our lives can finally begin. In their minds, we’ve kept no secrets, dreamed no dreams, committed no sins. But few of us come to motherhood unmarked by life. We’ve had pasts and passions—and yes, regrets.
“I didn’t realize dying was a full-time job. But in a way, it’s been good. I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in my life. Ironic, isn’t it? Figuring it all out just as I’m getting ready to make my exit.”
Everyone was given their portion in life and she’d had hers. Some of it—perhaps most of it—she had selfishly squandered. But in these last few months and weeks, she’d finally come to understand why each soul was sent out into the world. It was to love—and to leave the mark of that love on the world when the time came to leave it. This, at long last, she had done.
