Florence may have sensed something, but I had no idea of what I was setting in motion the day I gave Ronsel Jackson a lift from town.

I talked to her just like I talk to a laboring woman. Mothers need to hear them soothing words. They just as important as the medicines, sometimes even more.

I loved all my children, but I loved Ronsel the most. If that was a sin I reckoned God would forgive me for it, seeing as how He the one stacked the cards in the first place.

Death may be inevitable, but love is not. Love, you have to choose. I’ll begin with that. With Love.

I figure if there is a God, She’s good and surged right now about the state of things down here.

What unimaginable luxury, never to wrestle with whether or why, never to lie awake nights wondering what if.

You don’t have to stop thinking and asking questions to believe in God, child. If He’d wanted a flock of eight billion sheep, He wouldn’t have given us opposable thumbs, much less free will.

That’s what it is to love someone: to give whatever you can while taking what you must.

You got to go along to get along.

The truth isn’t so simple. Death may be inevitable, but love is not. Love, you have to choose.