Akhmed summoned the arborist with small declarative memories, and Sonja let him go on longer than she otherwise would because she, too, had tried to resurrect by recitation, had tried to recreate the thing by drawing its shape in cinders, and hoped that by compiling lists of Natasha’s favorite foods and songs and annoying habits, her sister might spontaneously materialize under the pressure of the particularities.

On those we love:"Every year that passed, it seemed a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to fear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.

In the months before the repatriation her heart had hardened around her sister’s absence, letting her love Natasha in memory as she could never love her in reality.

I'm thinking of that Florida lady again, the one who wanted a book about the lighter side of a child's death, and I know: all she wanted was permission to remember her child with pleasure instead of grief. To remember that he was dead, but to remember him without pain: he's dead but of course she still loves him, and that love isn't morbid or bloodstained or unsightly, it doesn't need to be shoved away.

He is very good at chess,” the girl snapped, and glared at Akhmed. Grammar was the only place the girl could keep her father alive, and after amending Akhmed’s statement, she leaned back against the wall and with small, certain breaths, said is is is. Her father was the face of her morning and night, he was everything, so saturating Havaa’s world that she could no more describe him than she could the air.

the other guineahendied of a broken heart and we came to New York.I used to sit at a table,drawing wingswith a pencil that kept breaking and i keptremembering how your mind looked when it sleptfor several years,to wake up asking why.So then you turned into a photographof somebody who’s trying not to laughat somebody who’s trying not to cry

He called after her as she walked away on the path. "Alys? Why were we dancing?""Take your mind there again," she called back. "You'll remember!"To herself she murmured, shaking her head with amusement as her eyes twinkled at her own memory. "Only thirteen. But we was barefoot and flower-strewn and foolish with first love.

I release ribbons of gratitude to flow back upon the path I have walked as it stretches out behind me, so they brush past everyone whose path crossed my own. May they feel the brief kiss of remembrance within their hearts, there and then gone again, passing like a spring breeze, so that they suddenly know the things they have done for others, in so many ways big and small, seen and unseen alike, somewhere are known and treasured.

Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope.

No matter how many times you say you'll give up with words, if your heart still says "love", there's nothing to be done.