The lunar eclipse as photographed from my mother-in-law’s front yard in Lincoln, Nebraska, September 27, 2015. There’s so much more I can say about this photograph. Like how my mother-in-law, Joan, died two days before I took this photo, and how her children and husband and nieces and nephews and grandchildren were all standing in the front yard of her house with me when I took this.

Or how my own mother had died back in Norfolk less than a month earlier in hospice under almost exactly the same circumstances as Joan, and how she had died on the night of the previous month’s full moon. And how the day after I took this photo was my mother’s birthday.

But for now, let’s just let this photo stand as evidence that the universe has a plan greater than we know, and it’s all going to be ok.

Because that’s the only thing that will get us through life on this horrible, wicked planet.