“I felt my heart breaking all over again. Why? Why had this happened to us? Why was the universe so cruel?”

“Believe me, I had my share of "why" questions. I turned my eyes upward again and again, and in my heart I asked why I, an ordinary human, should be bearing such an extraordinary burden of pain and grief. Why I was the one picked to deal with such a tortuous twist of fate? It all seemed so unjust. I had reached a point where I had to get answers to some questions that were inside me. Shutting myself into the world of my heart and mind, I wondered, "Why? Why? Why?”

“And I also know that this is why love allows us to be so cruel to the beloved: so that the beloved doesn't make the mistake of loving us again or loving us for the first time.”

“For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.”

“Why are you doing this to yourself? When something bad happens, why do you have to pick at it until it bleeds all over again?”

“Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.”