When you are young, your parents try their best to shelter you from grief. But when you grow older and death knock on your loved ones' doors, you can no longer be shielded from the pain you are bound to feel.

The funny thing about grief is, it waxes and wanes; you can even smile and laugh while you are grieving. It hits you in waves, and when it does, it feels like someone kicked you in the solar plexus.
•
You cannot feel one emotion 24/7. Your brain will work to protect you from yourself. It will make you forget the most dominant emotion, even if for a little while.

And happiness and grief or two emotions that take the longest to leave your system. But why do we write so much about grief? Like I am at this moment, reeling from the aftereffects of this book I hold my hands. On any other day I would have concluded that it had emotional depths and that it made me sad.

But sadness is not what I feel right now. I am overwhelmed with only grief. As Griffin writes, 'No one, no one really knows loss until it's someone you love . . . And when it's gone . . . it's as if it's been ripped from you. Raw and exposed, you stand dripping blood all over the good feckin' carpet.'
As I leafed through the pages of this book, along with Maurice's, I saw my own pain and grief. As Maurice talked fondly about the people he had lost, I, too, thought about the person I had lost. And this grief had every bit to do with death.

When All Is Said knocked the wind out of me, and just like Maurice, I will have to feel this ache in my chest for as long as I live.