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I think, for me, the last year was about connectedness, which is ironic because I felt so alienated from so many of the people in my life. But I felt a deep deep sense of connectedness with suffering and grief in people around me. It was a beautiful, sad, overwhelming feeling of having a very human experience of loss shared by many in so many different ways. At some point, for the immediate weeks after Lucia died, I would see people as their suffering. I think it helped open my eyes to how vulnerable we all are.

I paint my face like a calavera. I don't know what I am trying to achieve, making myself look dead, but I do it. I am alone. It feels like I am doing something wrong, and in that way, I am excited. I put a base of white onto my face. It reminds me of high school and listening to the Cure and being a punk rocker. Then I pull out the black face paint crayon and draw a joy there, a swirl here. Some flowers and decorations. I am more beautiful with the mask of death.

Gal, this was so stunning. The passages that resonated with you resonate with me, too. They make that occasional yearning for a spiritual home crop up again. I'm not religious in the typical sense of the word, for so many of the reasons you mention here - in too many ways, the bible and church and the people who presume to employ them just don't ring as truth for me.

I don't know what I am, exactly - not an atheist, but not too comfortable with conventional ideas and mythology around religion. I'd feel out of sorts if someone suggested Liam was in a place called 'heaven', or that his injuries and death were at the expense of some being's 'plan'. I feel like those are easy, pick-and-choose sentiments that allow the speaker to wash his or her hands, to feel like they've neatly said what they think they're supposed to say. It doesn't rub me the wrong way, necessarily - it just feels foreign, as you said - like clothes that don't fit.