Grief refuses to flee the past just because it is gone and things have now changed. .... Consider when we lose our innocence--when we discover that we can injure and have injured others, that the slate of our lives is not clean. Suddenly we realize that we must travel into the future carrying not just any past, but our particular past, a past that cannot be changed. Whatever freedom means, we are not free to undo this past. The freedom comes in how we relate this past to our future. We can drown ourselves in regret, lose ourselves in nostalgia, or cling to these old injuries and losses. But if we do, it is our "choice," not our destiny.