Six months ago feels like a lifetime ago — a life where the biggest stresses were normal ones, predictable ones, the kind that you could shrug off with a good night’s sleep or a weekend off. Back then, at twenty-five, I was a structural engineer who spent too much time working overtime and too little time cooking anything that didn’t come out of a microwave. My fiancée Jenna and I debated whether we’d selected too many 80s songs for our wedding playlist. My biggest argument with my mom, Naomi, was over her insisting I take “real vitamins” instead of relying on black coffee to keep me running. She would call me on Saturdays to remind me to pick up items from the grocery store — kale, almond milk, honey — the sorts of things she believed would extend my life into ninety.

My life then had shape: deadlines, plans, a future that felt as certain as anything can feel in your 20s. Then everything cracked open on a Tuesday afternoon. A stranger ran a red light, and my mom — who was on her way to buy birthday candles for my twin sisters’ tenth birthday cake — was gone before the paramedics arrived. That moment didn’t just take her.