When A Lost Loved One

I Find Interesting Characters Or Lessons That Resonate With People And Sometimes I Write About Them In The Sports Pages, Sometimes I Write Them In A Column, Sometimes In A Novel, Sometimes A Play Or Sometimes In Nonfiction. But At The Core I Always Say To Myself, 'is There A Story Here? Is This Something People Want To Read?'

I Still Think There Is A Way To Take All The Mistakes That We've Made As Adults And Put A Little Bit Of A Salve On Them, A Little Bit Of A Fix On Them, If We Just Are A Little Smarter In What We Teach Our Kids.

Much Of What We Called "depression" Was Really Dissatisfaction, A Result Of Setting A Bar Impossibly High Or Expecting Treasures We Weren't Willing To Work For.

When Hope Is Gone, Time Is Punishment.

But Then She Did. She Died. No More Visits, No More Phone Calls. And Without Even Realizing It, I Began To Drift, As If My Roots Had Been Pulled, As If I Were Floating Down Some Side Branch Of A River.