May had finally arrived. It was our time to head north. To escape, before summer’s oppressive heat and humidity enveloped the Gulf Coast and our southern home. The rental car was packed with everything we needed for another summer aboard. Another summer cruising the coast of Maine, a place that while still wild and rugged, was slowly becoming familiar to us. This would be our fourth summer discovering its treasures. Along our route north, we would also visit our favorite stops in the Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound and Cape Cod. But then the phone rang—my wife Dori answered, and in a quiet moment, our entire journey changed course.
Her 95-year-old mother had unexpectedly become critically ill. She questioned how could this be? We were just with her last weekend, and she was fine. Without hesitation, we turned the car around. A U-turn—one swift movement that redirected not just our drive to the boat, but the entire arc of our summer, our expectations, our sense of where we were meant to be.
U-turns are rarely planned. They are more like an interruption, a sudden realization that the road ahead is no longer the one we should be traveling. Sometimes they are proceeded with warning signs—gut feelings, quiet whispers of doubt. Other times they arrive without notice—like an unexpected phone call that demands immediate action. But a U-turn is not just an abrupt reversal; it is also a pause and a pivot. It requires the willingness to abandon what was planned and accept what is needed. It is the act of circling back, of reconsidering and rerouting. And often, in making that turn, we find ourselves in places we never expected to be.
Fortunately, that phone call came in time for Dori to fly to Los Angeles and be at her mother’s side when she passed. Now, instead of dropping anchor in quiet coves and tracing new shorelines, we found ourselves staying in the house where Dori grew up, sorting through the remnants of a life well lived. The house, untouched by time in so many ways, held echoes of her childhood—her first bicycle still hanging from the rafters in the garage, the collection of her mother’s treasured knick-knacks and the familiar scent of old books and wood polish.
While certainly not the one Dori had in mind for the summer, cleaning out her mother’s home was a journey of its own, and it required different navigation skills. This one was navigating through a lifetime of memories, both tender and painful. Each drawer opened, each photo rediscovered, each faded letter or trinket unearthed was a reminder of a woman who had lovingly shaped my wife’s world. It was not the summer we had envisioned, but in many ways, it was the one we needed.
Grief is not linear. Like a U-turn, it loops back on itself, circling through sorrow, gratitude, longing and acceptance. In returning to her childhood home, Dori was able to grieve not just the loss of her mother, but the passing of time itself, the closing of a chapter that had begun in those very rooms.
At sea, we expect the unexpected. Weather shifts, currents pull, plans change. Our life aboard is made up of constant course corrections, adjustments to wind and tide. But on land, we often cling to the illusion of control, believing that we set our course and follow it without deviation. Life of course does not work that way. It is filled with interruptions, detours and reroutings.
Yet not all detours lead in the wrong direction. Some bring us exactly where we are meant to be, even if we do not realize it at the time. Had we continued to our boat, had we spent the summer as planned, we would have missed the opportunity to be present in this moment of transition, to honor a life, to close a chapter with care, to support one another through loss.
The things we resist—change, interruption, the abrupt turning of the wheel—are often the very things that shape us most. They remind us of what matters. They strip away the illusion of certainty and leave us with what is real: love, connection and the fleeting beauty of time spent with those we too often take for granted.
As we packed up my mother-in-law’s house, sorting through decades of belongings, it was clear that life’s success is not measured by how carefully we stick to a plan, but by how we respond when the ground shifts beneath us. A U-turn is not a failure, it is not a mistake. It is an act of recognition, of humility, of understanding that sometimes, the most important journey is the one we never intended to take.
