You know that the Greeks used to believe that people were made up of two heads and two bodies. But Zeus was afraid of how powerful that could be, so he split people in two. That way, instead of causing trouble for him, they spent the rest of their lives trying to find their other half.
Home isn’t a where, Olive. It’s a who.
Don’t think you have to discuss the illness. Sometimes, a sick person needs a break. And if you ask up front if he wants to talk about how he feels – or doesn’t – you’re giving him control at a time when he doesn’t have a lot of choices.
I believe that there are five things we need to say to people we love before they die, and I give this advice to caregivers: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. I tell them that they can interpret those prompts any way they like, and nothing will have been left unsaid.
Everyone’s surprised by death. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. It’s not exactly a spoiler. But I think that what really shocked me is how many people can’t see the shape of the life they’ve lived until they get to the very end of it.
The opposite of love, you think, isn’t hate. It’s complacency.
Appreciate what you have now, because there may be no tomorrow. If your life span is decreasing every day, what are you doing now to appreciate what you have left? What gives your life meaning?
Creation, by definition, is separation. Moving forward means being split apart.
When you fall in love, it’s because you find someone who fills all your empty spaces. When you fall out of love, it’s because you realize that you’re both broken.
Whether or not you believed a fetus was a human being, there was no question in anyone’s mind that a grown woman was one. Even if you placed moral value on that fetus, you couldn’t give it rights unless they were stripped away from the woman carrying it. Perhaps the question wasn’t When does a fetus become a person? but When does a woman stop being one?
Who we are is about not what we do, but why we tell ourselves we do it.
He was the kind of dog whose heart was too big for his own body, and so he continuously offered it up to me.
LOSE someone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It’s the scar you feel for, the flaw you can’t stop seeing. It’s the tender place that won’t bear weight. It’s a void.
That would be good,” Win says. “For Felix, too.” I believe that there are five things we need to say to people we love before they die, and I give this advice to caregivers: I forgive you. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Goodbye.
It is not that she isn’t active or that she doesn’t eat healthily. It’s just how she is made, and if that isn’t everyone’s standard of perfect, then maybe they just have to revise their damn standard.
Suddenly the guy looked up, his blue eyes catching mine. They made me think of the heart of a glacier, of how, when you touch dry ice with your bare skin, you cannot let go even if you try.
I remember reading a novel once that said the native Alaskans who came in contact with the white missionaries thought, at first, they were ghosts. And why shouldn’t they have thought that? Like ghosts, white people move effortlessly through through boundaries and borders. Like ghosts, we can be anywhere we want to be.
Art isn’t what you see. It’s what you remember.
A flight attendant is the guide who helps you navigate that passage smoothly. As a death doula, I do the same thing, but the journey is from life to death, and at the end, you don’t disembark with two hundred other travelers. You go alone.
How do you undo intimacy? How do you go back to being acquaintances, when the other person knows every inch and groove of you, every irrational fear, every trigger?