When Death Takes Your Mother, It Steals

This Is The Greatest Gift God Can Give You: To Understand What Happened In Your Life. To Have It Explained. It Is The Peace You Have Been Searching For.

The Years After Graduation Hardened Me Into Someone Quite Different From The Strutting Graduate Who Left Campus That Day Headed For New York City, Ready To Offer The World His Talent. The World, I Discovered. Was Not All That Interested.

The News Of Life Is Carried Via Telephone. A Baby's Birth, A Couple Engaged, A Tragic Car Accident On A Late Night Highway - Most Milestones Of The Human Journey, Good Or Bad, Are Foreshadowed By The Sound Of A Ringing.

Holding Anger Is A Poison. It Eats You From The Inside. We Think That Hating Is A Weapon That Attacks The Person Who Harmed Us. But Hatred Is A Curved Blade. And The Harm We Do, We Do To Ourselves. Forgive, Edward. Forgive...no One Is Born With Anger. And When We Die, The Soul Is Freed Of It. But Now, Here, In Order To Move On, You Must Understand Why You Felt What You Did, And Why You No Longer Need To Feel It.' She Touched His Hand. 'you Need To Forgive Your Father.' ~pgs 141-142

Parents Rarely Let Go Of Their Children, So Children Let Go Of Them. They Move On. They Move Away. The Moments That Used To Define Them - A Mother's Approval, A Father's Nod - Are Covered By Moments Of Their Own Accomplishments. It Is Not Until Much Later, As The Skin Sags And The Heart Weakens, That Children Understand; Their Stories, And All Their Accomplishments, Sit Atop The Stories Of Their Mothers And Fathers, Stones Upon Stones, Beneath The Waters Of Their Lives.