"As the first clod of earth hit her mother's coffin, Juliet could barely catch a breath. Her mother would suffocate beneath all that earth, she thought, but Juliet was suffocating too. An image came to her mind--the martyrs who were pressed to death by stones piled on top of them. That is me, she thought, I am crushed by loss. "Don't seek out elaborate metaphors," her English teacher had said of her school essays, but her mother's death had revealed that there was no metaphor too ostentatious for grief. It was a terrible thing and demanded embellishment."