I think human beings exist poised between two terrors: being known, really known, for who they are, and never being known, therefore never being loved for who they really are.
Though I’ve courted and teased death, played irresponsibly with my life, I never believed in my own mortality until I sat beside my grandfather’s cold body, touched and smelled and embraced it. All along, it was my unbelief that made recklessness possible. The hour I spend with my grandfather, kneeling by the long drawer, changes my life. The kiss I place on his unyielding cheek begins to wake me, just as my father’s in the airport put me to sleep. I am transformed from a person who assumed she had time to squander to one who now knows that no matter how many years her fate holds, there will not be enough.