I’m walking to collect the mail at the end of our driveway when I hear a voice high above me.

“Ali! Ali! I’m stuck and I can’t get down!”

I look around, bewildered, then spot my big brother near the top of the 80-foot Eastern white pine in our yard. An hour earlier, he’d jumped to the lowest branch and spiraled his way up.

I recently rediscovered a photograph of four generations of women in my family: my grandmother at 90, my mother at 60, me at 33, and my daughter at 3. My grandmother would go on to live to 102.

One of the bigger lessons I have learned in life is that not all endings come because something is broken.

Sometimes life is beautiful. Everyone is healthy. Relationships are thriving. Dreams are unfolding exactly as they should.

And then, somehow, it is time to say goodbye anyway.

Call me shallow, but one of the first things I fell for about my husband was his “python” arms. That was my description of his biceps—a description that made him smile and ask me out on a date.