It was going to be two years since Pete died, her husband of nearly forty years. Thirty-nine years, seven months, and twenty-two days, Alice kept reminding herself when she felt downright depressed from the loss and the loneliness, which was often. Too often, her friends would tell her when she’d call to sob out her misery over the phone.

When I was young, my father, who was a rising star in the company he worked for, was transferred to Georgia for a couple of years to train for a management position. I was devastated for having to be jerked out of my school away from my beloved, long-time friends, and so I spent the majority of the trip driving from Utah, my birth state, to this far away alien destination, pouting. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. But then there were a lot of things I ‘couldn’t believe’ when it came to my father’s decisions, and my own ‘welcome-to-the-real-world’ realizations.