Quotes from Scot Gardner

It gets easier when you've met and dealt with your own grief. It gets easier, but it'll probably never be easy.

Hold on, don't skip all the good bits, I thought. Don't dream me a life without the romance. Let me do the coloring in myself.

It wasn't hard to imagine them surrounded by their families as they did the last of their breathing. Said their goodbyes. Kissed cheeks. No luggage to check in. Leave your body with us, I thought. We'll look after that.

There's no shame," John Barton said quietly. "Funerals are the place for letting it out. They're the last free-for-all in our society. Without them we would all turn to stone from unexpressed emotion.

Was it courage that made her take the last step, or weakness? Was it loss that walked her to the edge, or a search for freedom?

The tiny conversation they'd had would reveal no evidence of her frayed edges.

The parts of my new job that filled me with abject and irrational fear, that twisted me into all kinds of knots, were the raw emotions of those left alive. It was the living who were the great unknown.

To truly know death, you'd have to have loved.

I wanted to tell him more. I had the fleeting desire to tell him a lot more, but old habits and the fear of revealing too much made the words congeal in my throat.

Something was stretched to the point of irreparable damage, and I wanted to bounce on it until it broke.

The sounds were trapped in the tank with him. His fingers pawed at the wet plastic but could find no hold.

My words dried up. I'd already used more than my daily quota, and the dull ache in my head was a warning not to overdo it. I shrugged.

When sleep is not a sanctuary, darkness sometimes is. When the mess of human activity nags at you, the ocean can make you deaf with its rhythmic wash.

Deal with death every day of my life... in one way or another. You can never tell when it's going to bring you undone.

I'm the drowning boy. I've been drowning for years.

He felt on the edge of something vast and dark. He stared at the infinity growing deeper above them and felt that at any moment he might fall off the planet.

That last thread of real family had snapped. It hadn't been torn apart with the calamity of a cyclone but unravelled in increments, over years.

The police protected the living, ambulance officers protected the injured, and we protected the dead. All as it should be.

The sharks that you need to fear are the ones inside your head -- Grandad

Your mind is a horse you ride, Merrick. No one can hold the reins for you -- Grandad

There was a peaceful rhythm to the cleaning and polishing. I was unrecognizable to myself.

Here was a task with boundaries and purpose, a small thing that made sense. A small thing I could do well.

She stared at me with that questioning look people often get when I open my mouth.