Have you ever had everything come together at once? A book deal (I just can’t use those words enough), completion of a big work project, a well-behaved (mostly) child, a memory full of holiday merriment, and a wedding to celebrate on New Year’s Eve. You’re filled with happy clichés. Everything is on the up and up. The sky is blue and the world is smiling with you.

Sure, you’re celebrating, but you’re hesitant about getting too comfortable in this happy place. You know enough to know that things will come around again. Not that everything will end in tragedy, but that there will be a natural, maybe even gradual, swing back to boredom, melancholy and/or irritability.

Then you get a call – a message on your voicemail from someone who shouldn’t be calling you, someone who, if she is calling, cannot possibly have good news. Just like that, the sky is not so blue. You’re reminded that things are not on the up and up for everyone. The world isn’t smiling with you.

Then you’re back in that familiar place of wishing you could do more to help and hoping that she knows she’s loved.