to free me from their grief

"The summer that my brother died, I moved home to be with my parents, until one day in August my mother told me to leave, to 'go and live your life.' What a gift that was, to free me from their grief. A few weeks later, I boarded an Amtrak train to New York City, my clothes and manuscript in a Hefty trash bag, $1,000 in my front jeans pocket."

~~ from Morningstar: Growing Up with Books by Ann Hood