Last week I wrote about how a cancer diagnosis of benign carcinoma is the best bad news ever.

Finding out that a dear friend died is the worst.

I didn’t know Martha well, but she was the beloved wife of a beloved friend of my own beloved husband, and that’s close enough for me to shed a tear or two.

It’s so easy to put off seeing people until next year—plane tickets are expensive, time is hard to come by, travel gets to be less of an adventure and more of a chore the older I get.

And  then something like this happens, and you think—what was I waiting for?