My mother was asked, with great politeness, to step down from the charity boards that had been the whole architecture of her standing, and her social world closed over the space where she had been.

I did not gloat.

There is a version of this story in which I savored every headline, and I understand its appeal, but it was not the version I wanted to live in.

I let the consequences of their own choices arrive, on their own schedule, at their own doors, and I turned my attention back to my life.

I want to say one honest thing about that, because it would be easy to make it sound more serene than it was.

It was not that I felt nothing when my father was eased into retirement, or when my mother’s world closed over the space where she had stood.