Years after Kelly's death, she had spent months reading books on grieving and death. Subconsciously, she was hoping to get a handle on death so that it could not hurt her like it had before. She poured over other people's experiences, reading about the five stages of grieving and how to accept the inevitable.

None of it helped her when her grandpa, father, grandma or her dearest friend Mike died. Her mind could logic things through at one level, but there was a whole other level of emotion that was left confused, and numb, and grieving, a part of her that couldn't make sense of it. And so the same lesson appears: people, of course, hurt you, even if it wasn't on purpose or intended. And trying to prepare yourself or protect yourself from that? Futility.

Her friend, Todd, told her about a chance meeting he had with his sister, with his nieces and nephew in tow, while he was out with a group of the college students he teaches. His students were excited to meet Todd's sister and one of them said to her, "You two are nothing alike!" And his sister responded, "Yes, I'm outgoing, but Todd has always been shy and withdrawn."

Not only were the students shocked (they were thinking the difference was more along the line of Todd's urban artiness and his sister's middle-Americaness), so were Todd's nieces and nephew. The Todd they knew was not shy. Their Todd was outgoing. He made friends easily and naturally. But the Todd his sister had in her mind was the one that had been frozen in time when they were growing up.

Like all of us, Todd's sister had a certain permutation of Todd that got caught in her mind. A person doesn't see it unless something--a wayward comment, a surprising moment--shocks them out of that view. But it wasn't only Todd's sister. Todd also felt that person inside himself, even though he knew that it was no longer who he was. His identification with his past self still hurt him as deeply as ever. And so the moment was painful for him, an unveiling in front of students and relatives that he would have preferred to remain hidden.

In a way, it reminded her of roaming around New York City. She was always surprised to see what buildings remained and what one's had come down, what businesses had made it after five, ten, fifteen years, and what one's had disappeared. She could never make accurate guesses beforehand as to these changes. The street scape reconfigures through some mix of rational and random causes and what is left is a pastiche of old and new.

Her own memory, which was pretty good, was a similar pastiche. Why do some memories stay so clear and easy to identify with, while others disappear as if they had never happened, and others change as new experiences are applied to the old and re-examined for meaning? She wondered if the memories we haul around with us for years--and their impact on our ideas of self--are our humanity?

She sometimes still has the urge to escape her own past, the things that have hurt her. But to lose the past completely is catastrophic.

She remembered a book her Aunt Kay had given her when she was in college. It was a book that encouraged internal reflection, suggesting great value in knowing oneself. The exercise that stuck in her mind was one where she was supposed to examine her future self: "Imagine yourself as you would like to be in ten years, and write down a description."

She remembered wanting to look impeccable and wanting to be aloof, so that no one could find fault with her. And even if they did, they would not penetrate her thick skin. This was perhaps typical of someone in their early 20s, at least certain someones, a desire not to be hurt by others, to be protected from the self-consciousness that is the plague of teenagers.

But having written down this ideal in a book, she had worked really hard to make it a reality. She created a habit of focusing upon her own self and on ways to protect herself instead of reaching out to others. But no matter how hard she tried, people would still get to her with a pointed comment. And she almost always felt others were better at things then she was (the world is filled with talented people, after all, more beautiful, more experienced, more successful).

Now, after all these years (twenty at least!), she believed that the strategies that she worked hard to put into place then, have acted against her. She would have been more enriched by looking outside herself to the culture and people that surrounded her.

The book itself is long missing.