Grief

She was imprisoned by two words: what if. What if I’d known she was dying? What if I’d known I was about to lose her? But what-ifs don’t empower us. They deplete us.

I told Sofia, “Today you can say, ‘If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.’ And that’s the end of the guilt. Because you owe it to your mom to turn that

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In the USA, we don’t do cute little public rituals like this where you’re invited to share your sadness with strangers who accept grief as a universal, unavoidable experience of life. No, your grief is horrifying and alienating, please keep it to yourself.

Parents often say, “I’d die for my child.” I heard a few of the parents in the grief group express the wish to trade places with their deceased children—to die so their children could live. After the war, I felt the same way. I would have gladly died to bring my parents and grandparents back.

But now I know that instead of dying for my dead, I can

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