“See, I’m taking photos of that rock outcropping as the sun sets,” the woman said, pointing to a distant canyon. The mountain range was wide and distinct, with tall peaks jutting high into the heavens. “It’s very different from the kind of work I’ve done my whole life. I’ve found my passion now. I’ve discovered my destiny. I may not have more than a few weeks to live it, but that’s not important.” She sounded sincere.

“What kind of work did you do in psychology?”

“Hemispheric integration.”

“Hemispheric what?”

“I helped people understand the wide capacity of their minds.”

“My wife was a first-year neurologist,” I said. “But I’ve never heard that term.”

“Was?”

I looked down into the brown sand.

“Was,” I said firmly.

“Well, when we experience an event in our lives,” the woman explained, “we record in our memory two separate and unique pictorial representations—one in each of the brain’s hemispheres. The left hemisphere is responsible for logical, linear thinking. The right is more concerned with spatial relationships and concepts such as personal safety.”

“And?” I replied, intrigued.

“And if we consistently use the perception from only one side of the brain, our choices are limited, and personal issues remain unresolved. Learning conscious control over which hemispheric image to utilize broadens our range of choices, and more responses become available to us. Imagine being able to understand and access the brain as it was designed to be used.

“Accessing this second hemisphere opens doors that we didn’t even know existed.”

I shrugged.

I wondered if there was some way I could change my own way of thinking, reprogram my brain to see the events of the past one hundred days entirely differently. If I could drive by that intersection just one more time and experience nothing—instead of seeing the image of them lying in the road, that last breath . . .

Maybe my life could change.

Maybe I could rewind, go back to the old job, go back to the house, back to the former friends, and act as if life were just a series of peaks and valleys. Maybe I would be able to overcome the valley. Get remarried. Be like the others in our society who are so good at reincarnating, adopting second lives.

I could have a whole new wife, a new kid, and justify it all by saying there are no accidents, and reach the understanding that it was destined to be. Feel as if I were destined to be with this new person, destined to bring another life into this world. Ignore the fact that the first family ever existed and got wiped away in a single moment.

Problem was, I could see none of it. I was hollow.

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