Buddy showed up unannounced. Mom wondered how he found out where we lived. We did not have a phone, but he wouldn’t have called anyway. My mom looked through the peephole, hesitated when she saw it was her cousin Buddy, yet reluctantly she opened the door.

Adapting to life in Beverly Hills challenged everything I thought I knew about people and places. Academics and social skills got tested. Unable to become invisible, I tried harder to earn recognition and respect.

Going through pictures with my son and daughter-in-law, I came across a picture with a hole.

“Look at this. My dad is cut out of the picture,” I said.

Like a favorite video, I retrieve, replay, and unwind memories of a happy time when the four of us lived in the same house as a family. In Ventura, California, I went to first grade at Sheridan Way Elementary.

Less than three months after Renée died, a loud knock in the middle of the night woke Mom and me, and I jumped to the floor from the top bunk, following her to peer from the corner. Two Las Vegas police officers stood at the door.

When I walk my dog Kona, we go up to the roads above our cabin that intersect with the main road. I always stop at the same spot to take a picture of the West Peak, one of the two “Spanish Peaks” in southeastern Colorado.