From ew.com comes this:

When I asked her how she prepared for Sun’s final Island moments, Kim told this story: “Right before we started shooting, [director] Jack Bender took me aside and told me about story that he read a long time ago, about this woman who was missing her dead husband, and how she had this beach ball that he blew up before he died. Every day she took a little breath from the beach ball. And that really got me right into the emotional core of where I needed to be to play that scene. Can you imagine that woman, taking that breath little by little every day, just to feel her husband’s presence?”

I kind of know how she felt, that woman with the beach ball…

Recently, I was wearing one of my sister Sherry’s robes that I had not worn before. An unused tissue was in one of the pockets. I held it to my nose and stroked my face with it, hoping to get just a little of her presence.