Of the wide band of human emotions, grief is the most elusive, the most chimerical, as distinctive to each person as a fingerprint, as impossible to pin down as rain. In college I had a friend who died suddenly and for months afterward her mother, whom I did not know before the tragedy, emailed me…
The teacher handed me an envelope, and my heart started racing. I never got envelopes. I never got called out. I was very much a background character of my second grade class, putting my books in my bag and thinking about Nintendo. I wondered what it could be. Had I won a prize? Had they…