A Mother Is The Portal By Which

The People We Most Love Do Become A Physical Part Of Us, Ingrained In Our Synapses, In The Pathways Where Memories Are Created.

One Word I Had Throughout The First Year And A Half Of My Mother's Death Was 'unmoored.' I Felt That I Had No Anchor, That I Had No Home In The World.

While I Did A Lot Of Research, I Ended Up Feeling That The Best Way To Write About Grief Was To Describe It From The Inside Out - The Show The Strange Intensities That Come Along With It, The Peculiar Thoughts, The Longing For That Past - All The Strange Moments Of Thinking You Glimpse The Dead Person On The Street, Or In Your Dreams.

I Wasn't Prepared For The Fact That Grief Is So Unpredictable. It Wasn't Just Sadness, And It Wasn't Linear. Somehow I'd Thought That The First Days Would Be The Worst And Then It Would Get Steadily Better - Like Getting Over The Flu. That's Not How It Was.

My Whole Life, I Had Been Taught To Read And Study, To Seek Understanding In Knowledge Of History, Of Cultures.