Pier Long

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“I am supposed to be touched. I can’t wait to find the person who will come into the kitchen just to smell my neck and get behind me and hug me and breathe me in and make me turn around and make me kiss his face and put my hands in his hair even with my soapy dishwater drips. I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?”
― Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

“All of the people who love me, all of my family who have loved me, have never left me. They gather from their other dimensions, and they make a small family party. They prepare all of the food and they do all of the talking. They are not visiting, they have descended into a place that exists as a perpetual home for anyone in our family ever. We come here to be born, to give birth, to die, and then when we are dead we attend all events. All of my dead relatives proclaim, with their presence here, that we are an unbroken group. And they say, “We have always been loving you and we have never left you.”
― Jenny Slate, Lifeform