There are moments on earth when the Lord smiles at the unexpected sweetness of His creation. - Mitch Albom

We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time — we often think they began with our arrival. That's not true.

Once, lovers on faraway shores sat by candlelight and dipped ink to parchment, writing words that could not be erased. They took an evening to compose their thoughts, maybe the next evening as well. When they mailed the letter, they wrote a name, a street, a city, a country and they melted wax and sealed the envelope with a signet ring.
Sarah had never known a world like that. Speed now trumped the quality of words. A fast send was more important.

All parents damage their children. IT cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
The damage done by Eddie's father was, at the beginning, the damage of neglect...
All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence. And now, someplace beoynd death, Eddie slumped against a stainless steel wall and dropped into a snowbank, stung again by the denial of a man whose love, almost inexplicably, he still coveted, a man ignoring him, even in heaven. His father. The damage done.
~pgs 104, 110