The journalism world was not for me –
I could never write a good obituary.
How can I pull together the
full picture of someone's life?
The proper words are always out of reach,
and there's no good way to
account for all the names of all the people
who danced in and out of their orbit.
There are so many people who leave impressions on us, and so many names
we never bother to learn.
But I knew I really loved him
when I'd memorized his mother's obituary,
when I knew the names of his late aunts and uncles, and when I could
draw his family tree in my mind,
even knowing that I would never be
part of his story.
