Well, As My Dad Would Say, It

His Love For My Mother Wasn't About Looking Back And Loving Something That Would Never Change. It Was About Loving My Mother For Everything -- For Her Brokenness And Her Fleeing, For Her Being There Right Then In That Moment Before The Sun Rose And The Hospital Staff Came In. It Was About Touching That Hair With The Side Of His Fingertip, And Knowing Yet Plumbing Fearlessly The Depths Of Her Ocean Eyes.

You Could Not Be Filled With Hate And Be Beautiful. Like Any Other Girl, I Wanted To Be Beautiful. But I Was Filled With Hate.

People Grow Up By Living.

I Had Always Been In Love With Him. I Counted The Lashes Of Each Closed Eye. He Had Been My Almost, My Might Have Been, And I Did Not Want To Leave Him

And There She Was, Alone And Walking Out In The Cornfield While Everyone Else I Cared For Sat Together In One Room. She Would Always Feel Me And Think Of Me. I Could See That, But There Was No Longer Anything I Could Do. Ruth Had Been A Girl Haunted And Now She Would Be A Woman Haunted. First By Accident And Now By Choice. All Of It, The Story Of My Life And Death, Was Hers If She Chose Tot Ell It, Even To One Person At A Time.