Catching Up

Ben

“I’m glad you’re handling your uncle’s death so well,” Mila finally said after I told her about Penny, Uncle Dean’s widow, and how I was worried about her. She wasn’t dealing with his death nearly as well as I had hoped she would. I was worried that she would lose the will to carry on.

“When someone dies, there are two ways to handle it,” I said. “Especially if they were close to you. You can lie down and die, too. Or you can pick yourself up and move forward. Give your life meaning, even.”

“That’s a good way to look at it,” Mila said. “It’s so easy to give up, but we owe it to ourselves to keep fighting.”

“Exactly,” I said. It made me feel amazing that Mila and I were on the same page about big things like this. We were very different in some ways, but in other ways, we were exactly the same.

I thought about the investigation that was pending now that Uncle Dean’s death turned out to be exactly the same as that of my father. I wanted to share it with Mila. It was a big deal, some