The Car Payment - Algebra, or the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain?

A business colleague and I were both in the same college algebra class (decades ago). Joe was an interesting guy who had a habit of framing many situations in life in making car payment terms. He said he learned early that you can't survive in life without a Hatchback. He pointed out that he could haul kids, groceries, a sofa, and golf clubs all on the same day and the console in the middle held his coffee in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Monday morning. He was resigned to the reality of car payments for the rest of his life. He said I don't have time for a water pump, a muffler, or tires. It just didn't matter, he traded in his car every three years when he knew his tires wouldn't pass inspection. In class one day the professor put this long equation on the board and turned around telling the class they needed to know how to factor the equation. He then proceeded to cross out x's, y's, and z's from both sides of the equation and when he began reducing the exponent values Joe broke out laughing and everybody watched as the professor turned around wondering what was so funny. Joe was blunt, but friendly and asked the professor, "Do I need that to make my car payment?" He then got up and handed his algebra book to the professor telling him to give it to someone who needed a car and walked out of class. That was the last time the class saw Joe. But I know Joe also hauled bushes, mulch, lumber, bicycles, a surfboard, and a River Birch tree in that Hatchback. He said he won't do trees until at least year two.

Then there's literature and its own unique following. I'm not one of them because my mind wanders too much. Mitzi, the love of my life, loved to read and she liked big books with hundreds of pages. She read many novels in only 2 or 3 days. I explained to her that I read fiction backwards and she never understood why it's more interesting to do this. I told her I start about thirty pages from the ending, then go back another thirty pages etc. Things are never predictable when you do this. Instead of being introduced to a character, you are lost, wondering who this Frank guy is, or why they are in Detroit when Fran's apartment is in Des Moines. In other words, the mystery is your own mind, not that of the author's. You keep going backward correcting all your mistakes with revelation after revelation sustaining your search for the truth. I kept telling Mitzi, her way was a boring march to the inevitable, but my way offered the promises of alternatives defined by the emotion of my mind.

Turning a page in life after a crushing loss is so hard to do. We must put our boots on when it gets cold and difficult and the snows of emotional chill leave us lost, or fearful, or tired or hopeless. But somebody, somewhere, a thousand miles away, has a Hatchback full of compassion ready to feed a hungry soul with a promise of unveiling.

Trees...they just pop up when you least expect it. Love is like that too...branching out in several directions becoming the masterpiece that is our loss. I am profoundly sorry for your loss. What can I do to help you turn the page? I'm listening.