Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

How do you do it?""Do what?""All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like ... like none if it mattered."Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the car over. Then he reached across the seat and brushed his thumb over her cheek; until then, she hadn't been aware she was crying. "Trix," he sighed, "it mattered.

There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car 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.

But that's what love is, isn't it? When it hurts you more to see someone suffer than it does to take the pain away?

When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right.

If you think about someone you've loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.

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