“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

What I learned from Naoko’s death was this: no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one.

“Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of life.” By living our lives, we nurture death.

Death in that place was not a decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said, “Don’t worry, it’s only death. Don’t let it bother you.”

That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

I’m twenty now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.

So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “Only assholes do that.”

I turned twenty, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way.