“Almost, not quite,I wish you all a long and happy Life”

“I wish you all a long and happy life”

“And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife. Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars."His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass. This little girl's grown up by now," she said.Almost. Not quite.I wish you all a long and happy life.”

“The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite moon. The rest is hiding just out of view, but there’s only one moon, so we follow it in the sky. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides.”

“Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort.So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish. ”

“When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and about how safe I was.”

“My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book.~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316”