From cradle to grave, Talal sprinted through life.

I never did see a life extinguished so abruptly.

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that is no longer is there.

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there.

The beauty of the sea is that it never shows any weakness and never tires of the countless souls that unleash their broken voices into its secret depths.

I don't think I ever fully understood before now the old saying that goes: "A mother's heart loves her young one until he grows; her ill one until he heals; and her traveler until he returns."

I have experienced all kinds of waiting; I've waited for my young to grow and the sick to heal, but I am still waiting on my little traveler and I do not know how long it will be until I see him again.

Grief is shameless; it refuses to be ignored. If you let it have its way, it becomes fatal. If you try to remove it piece by piece, it only multiplies like a tumor. And if you try to fight it, it becomes like quicksand; you try to claw your way back to the surface, and for a second you feel the fresh air against your face, thinking you've survived, only to be pulled fiercely back down again, swallowed whole, nothing left.