She is so excruciatingly well-meaning it makes me want to plunge her long face into a barrel of ale to perk her up.

If we don’t think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?

A sense of responsibility – or was it guilt? – hung over me, that I was in some way at fault because of cowering to all these pompous men all these years, when I should have had the bravery to reclaim my own mind. That if we women had done this years ago, before the last war, before this one, we’d be in a very different world.

She said that she didn’t mind the thought of death. That realizing you’re going to die actually makes life better as it’s only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live, not the one everyone else wants you to live. And to thoroughly enjoy every minute.

And isn’t love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even though one of them hadn’t.

You need to find where you fit in this world, where you are happiest, where you can make a difference. And don’t be afraid of change.

He got into the van and opened the window to wave, and then, as it revved up and pulled away, his lips touched the palm of his hand and he blew me a kiss, something he hasn’t done since he was a child. It was as if on the edge of manhood he, too, remembered everything we had shared, that he was the man who was still, in his heart, my little boy, late for school.

The volume swelled with passion and deliberation as we poured our emotions into every darkened corner of the church. Every dusty cloister and crevice reverberated, reaching a crescendo in the final chorus, a vocal unison of thirteen villagers that cold, still night, pouring out our longings, our anxieties, our deepest fears.

I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.

We are as strong as the snakes, as fierce as the wolves, and as free as the stars.