A Couple Months After My Heart Attack,

Only Later Did I Come To Understand That To Be A Mother Is To Be An Illusion. No Matter How Vigilant, In The End A Mother Can't Protect Her Child - Not From Pain, Or Horror, Or The Nightmare Of Violence, From Sealed Trains Moving Rapidly In The Wrong Direction, The Depravity Of Strangers, Trapdoors, Abysses, Fires, Cars In The Rain, From Chance.

Only Now That My Son Was Gone Did I Realize How Much I'd Been Living For Him. When I Woke Up In The Morning It Was Because He Existed, And When I Ordered Food It Was Because He Existed, And When I Wrote My Book It Was Because He Existed To Read It.

When We Went Into The Ocean, I Watched His Body As He Dove Into The Waves, And It Gave Me A Feeling In My Stomach That Wasn't An Ache But Something Different.

What About You? Are You Happiest And Saddest Right Now That You've Ever Been?" "of Course I Am." "why?" "because Nothing Makes Me Happier And Nothing Makes Me Sadder Than You.

Life In General In My Experience Gets Deeper And Deeper, More And More Profound, More And More Complex, The Older One Gets.