You can never be free of their criticism until you no longer seek their praise.

They say that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. They never tell you that when you watch someone you once loved dying, hovering between this life and the next, it's twice as painful, because you're reliving two lives that traveled one road together.

Going for it and changing what you could change-that's what success was all about.

Now, a month later, I sit, foggy, a similar state of mind, in a different seafood restaurant with a locals-know-every-secret bar, two happy hour martinis downed, fidgeting with my napkin below the lip of the table, and I barely hear Wendy ask me another question. She brought a bag of them tonight.

She was the kind of woman a person could die over or kill over.

She, as no other ever could, reached every corner of his heart. His joy, and his salvation.