Every family has its cracks. For me, one of the biggest was distance.

When I was a kid, my parents made the move from Massachusetts to Florida. That physical distance — especially before FaceTime, texting, and social media — created emotional distance too. I grew up without strong bonds to my grandparents, cousins, aunts, or uncles. It wasn’t anyone’s fault exactly, but I always felt that gap.

As I got older, that emotional distance started to bother me more. I couldn’t understand why one set of grandparents never came to visit. The other came only once after we moved. That stung — especially when I saw my wife’s grandmother making cross-country trips well into her 80s to be with her grandkids.

But then I learned something that shifted everything: my grandfather was terrified of flying. That was the reason. It had nothing to do with me. And after he passed, my grandmother ended up moving down to Florida. We finally got the chance to reconnect — and we did. I got time with her. Real time. And I’ll never take that for granted.

“When We Mended” is about that second chance. About breaking through misunderstandings and showing up before it’s too late. I was lucky — I got to close a chapter the right way. But life doesn’t always give us that shot. When it does, we’ve got to take it.