“You remember too much,my mother said to me recently.Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down?”

“You know," my father said sprinkling nutmeg on his brandy Alexander, "if you sniff too much nutmeg, you could die.""You can die from anything, really," my mother said "You can die from eating too many apricots.""How many apricots?" I said, afraid that the World's Most Pathetic Death could happen to me.”

“Graves scooched a little closer to me, and I didn't even think about it. I put my arms around him and hugged. I didn't care if it hurt my arm and my ribs and my neck and pretty much every other part of me, my heart most of all. When you're wrecked, that's the only thing to do, right? Hold onto whatever you can. Hold on hard.”

“Feel how tight my arms are around you?" he said. "This is how tight I'll be holding you. No matter where you go or where I go, remember how tight I'm holding you.”

“I am speechless: what can I answer?I put hand on my mouth.I have said too much already;now I will speak no more.”

“This is the last time I would ever visit the cemetery or my wife's grave, but I didn't want to expend too much effort in trying to remember it. As I said, this is the place where she's never been anything but dead. There's not much value in remembering that.”