Over fifty plus years of writing, my audience has never been huge other than the years I wrote articles about insurance claim handling. Despite the riveting genre, those articles never garnered much more than a gaggle of stereotypical insurance conventioneers who dropped their mostly smoked cigs long enough to tap the ash off into a weary plastic coffee cup that long ago stopped holding liquids, so they could give my insurance prose a cursory glance and decide whether it should go with them to the bathroom. I’ve a particular gift for creating literature that lusters in the glow of excretion.

I had a great audience in my sister-in-law Daley, though. She must have had a notification alarm set, because every word I ever wrote triggered a loving remark from her almost immediately. Year after year, essay after essay, story after story was rejected for publication (and still is), but our beloved Dale never missed an opportunity to let me know she hung on every word. We miss her for so many reasons, not the least of which is that she made me feel like someone was out there listening. She made us all feel that way.