The Long Way Around

That yes was my whole second life.

It took me sixty-two years and the loss of nearly everything to learn the simplest thing there is, the thing I’d have told you I already knew: that no one is meant to do it alone, that the reaching is worth the risk, that a friend is worth driving six blocks in the snow for.

I took the long way around to that lesson.

Most of us do.

But I got there in the end, and I got there in time, and on Wednesday there’s a place set for me at Trudy’s table, and Del will hand me a wrench, and we won’t say much, and it will be everything.

That’s the part nobody tells you.

It can still be everything, even this late.

Especially this late.

THE END.