"...Maybe death doesn't change things, either."
    "You mean the spirit lives on? I'm not sure I buy that."
    "I don't know that I do, either, although I keep an open mind on the subject. But that's not what I'm getting at. Do you honestly think Jan'll stop being a part of your life when her own life comes to an end?"
    "Well, it'll be a little harder to get her on the phone."
    "My mother died over six years ago," he said, "and I can't get her on the phone, but I don't have to. I can hear her voice. I don't mean that she's necessarily out there somewhere, in an afterworld or on another plane of existence. The voice I hear is the part of her that's become a part of me and lives on in my mind." He fell silent for a moment, and then he said, "My father's been gone over twenty years, and I've still got his voice in my head too, telling me I'll never amount to anything."
    "I sat at the window and watched it rain," I said, "and I thought of all the people I've lost over the years. That's what comes of living this long. It's a hell of a choice life gives you. Either you die young or you lose a lot of people. But they're not gone if I still think of them, right?"
    "More cold comfort, huh?"
    "Well, it's better than no comfort at all."

from The Devil Knows Your Dead, pg. 86
A Matthew Scudder Novel
by Lawrence Block