I've been listening to A Prayer for Owen Meany during my work commute and laughing and feeling the sting of the truth by turn.  I love that book.  Irving is a genius at telling the truth of and about New England.  That what I see really is true--rather than a strange dream--is also comforting.  Today reader Joe Barrett breathed life into the lines of  John Wheelwright as he reflects on losing his mother: “When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”

Lines like these are as beautiful and essential as noticing the beginnings and endings of day, of reminding ourselves that it is good to be here.