“I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes when the grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.”

“As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.”

“I wake up in that state of grief when you can tell you've been mourning even in your sleep.”

“After you died, I kept your wardrobe locked, with all your clothes inside, all your lovely ties. The scent of you. I sat inside this wardrobe when I missed you so much.”

“Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.”

“Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation.None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve.To face death is to stand alone.”