How the pain of someone who I love is not something to be learned from, but something to comfort them from, despite my temptation to treat them so. I wonder if, in all the ways I am determined not to be like my father, I end up being more like my mother. Because my mother taught me that it was possible to be comforted in the face of misery, not just told to embrace it.
Maybe I can hold their duality within me.