Euripides wrote, “What greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead?” That was more like it.Am I allowed to say “my son”? Was it not a statement of fact that I had given birth on the bathroom floor of the Blue Sky Hotel in Mongolia and watched my son live and die?

In writing you can always change the ending or delete a chapter that isn’t working. Life is uncooperative, impartial, incontestable.

For a while, it was as poisonous and wrenching as it had been since the day it happened, as intolerable: a crime against nature. Then the grief went back to sleep in my body.

What peace it must be to know that someone is yours, no matter what - it is ordained, can never be otherwise.