“You ain’t dead yet, so you ain’t done.”

“I looked around the garden, the sun feeling warm on my back. "So why are you here? I would think you'd want to be as far away from a hurricane as possible."She looked at me as if I'd just suggested streaking down the beach. It took her a moment to answer. "Because this is home." She wanted to see if the words registered with me, but I just looked back at her, not understanding at all.After a deep breath, she looked up at a tall oak tree beyond the garden, its leaves still green against the early October sky, the limbs now thick with foliage. "Because the water recedes, and the sun comes out, and the trees grow back. Because" -she spread her hands, indicated the garden and the trees and, I imagined, the entire peninsula of Biloxi- "because we've learned that great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness. It's like a needed reminder that the human spirit is alive and well despite all evidence to the contrary." She lowered her hands to her sides. "I figured I wasn't dead, so I must not be done”

“I wish I could change things for you, make it so this all doesn't have to hurt so much. But that's the point, isn't it? That one day we'll find that the pain we suffered was worth it.”

“Death and loss, they plague you. So do memories. Like the Mississippi's incessant slap against the levees, they creep up with deceptive sweetness before grabbing your heart and pulling it under.”

“They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.”

“Miles and years become suddenly invisible when you find yourself back where you started from, as if you've learned nothing and you are once again the person you once were.”

“Mama?""Yes, Emmy."She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?"Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable.”