The Paris Agent

While your parents are alive a part of you remains a child. But once they are gone..... Everything feels different, I finish for him, throat suddenly tight. Like your safety net has disappeared.

To truly love someone, we must accept the real version of them, scars and all.

And whatever we do with the freedom we have been gifted, whether our achievements and our struggles are big or small, we will do it in honor of those who gave so much so that we could live in a better world.

Every mark life makes upon us creates a new version of our identity because there is simply no going back to who we were before those experiences.

you will not bring any one of your loved ones back for even a moment by refusing to live your own life.

But then I pictured Hughie growing up without the anxiety of the looming shadow of the Nazis just on the other side of the Channel. I saw him growing up in a world where hate had been conquered, and freedom had won. Surely, if the Allies won the war, humanity would reject bigotry and cruelty and the world would be a better place forever. Surely, if the Allies won, the world would learn to reject hate, and embrace love.

War is hell, love. History nominates a winner but every single person touched by war loses something. Even those one step removed from the oppression, and the shooting, and the bombing.

I’m sorry to tell you that grief is forever, but the acute phase does ease—in its own time.

Even thinking about finding a new project is too exhausting for me. The way Dad glances at me tells me he understands.