I would prove to you that being different isn't a death sentence but a call to arms.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I should have named names.

See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?