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1 " I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover. "
― , The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
2 " Sometimes I'm sad about everything; the way my grilled cheese sandwich tastes, how nice my socks feel, a song John is playing in the kitchen. One time he puts on this goofy Loudon Wainwright song that was on a mix tape I used to listen to during my commute from the boys' school in Bethesda back into the District when we were newly married and everything was about to begin and it makes me burst into tears about the shortness of everything. "
3 " Sometimes the most important thing is knowing when to quit. Sometimes being heroic is knowing when to say enough is enough. "
4 " For me, faith involves staring into the abyss, seeing that it is dark and full of the unknown—and being okay with that. "
5 " A retired rabbi—the friend of a friend—writes me an email out of the blue about how he lost his mother when he was nine years old. In the message, he lists all the things he remembers about his mom and all the ways she remains in his life: her favorite flower, the books she read him, her sense of humor. “She is far from a hole in my life. She is an enormous presence that can never be replaced.” His words are a gift that I pull out some nights and let swirl through the room, brush over my skin like a tincture. "
6 " Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens. Here "
7 " I am trying to know myself. I want a better sense of what kind of mother the kids will remember me to be. It’s hard: I am not done becoming me. I am still in the works. I still aim to be softer in some places, firmer in others. "
8 " I want death to find me planting my cabbages, not concerned about it or—still less—my unfinished garden. "
9 " When you fall in love with your kids, you fall in love forever. "
10 " Here we are closer to something I am trying to understand: that openness to fear. We are hearts and stingers. We ride the tide. We believe in resistance; we are made both of fight and float. "
11 " That was grief, I say to myself. It makes us dark and a little crazy. "
12 " She is far from a hole in my life. She is an enormous presence "
13 " It’s weird,” I say. “For me—I can’t find books dark enough right now.” The things I’m loving these days: things where everything is not okay, and that’s okay—or not. Montaigne incredulous: “Did you think you would never reach the point toward which you were constantly heading? "
14 " You are fully entitled to slap the next person who tells you that God only gives us what we can handle. "
15 " It’s a beautiful, human kind of coping. Clean laundry, wine. "
16 " I think of this feeling sometimes -- and I can imagine that sort of letting go: warm, dangerous, seductive. What if this is what death is: The engine beneath you steady; those that hold you strong; the sun warm?I think maybe it wouldn't be so bad to fall into that, to loosen the grip at the waist, let gravity and fate take over -- like a thought so good you can't stop having it. "
17 " We have to learn that what cannot be cured must be endured,” Montaigne also says. "
18 " Just to sit with her and enjoy the quietness around her—the way so many children seem to love to do with their mothers without understanding how we disturb that quietness with our very presence. "
19 " I am still trying to know myself. I want a better sense of what kind of mother the kids will remember me to be. It's hard: I am not done becoming me. I am still in the works. I still aim to be softer in some places, firmer in others. "
20 " Of course they all remember; of course it is not only me, trying to both preserve and crack open the lie that time doesn’t pass, that loss isn’t a blade so sharp that it can make you bleed long before you ever feel the sting. "