Such a Painful Softness

There's a really thoughtful review of Us by the good Robert Kloss at Red Fez. The review opens like this: "Michael Kimball’s Us is, as much as we may not want to admit it, the story of all of us and what we daily attempt to ignore: that eventually our loved ones, our spouses and significant relations, will either die and leave us or we will die and leave them." Toward the end of the review, there's this phrase -- "such a painful softness" -- that seems to capture the feeling of the novel.