One time I heard a man laugh as he told a story about his mother. Whenever someone asked her when something had happened — a wedding, a move, a birthday — she would pause and say, “Well, let’s see… Dad died in 1976.” He thought it was funny, how she used that as her calendar. But when I heard it, I didn’t hear humor. I heard the ache underneath — the way his mother had come to mark time by the loss of her love, as if everything in her life existed in relation to that moment.