1:52, 1:53, 1:54. The minutes tick off like seconds as I sit in my economy class rental car, which must look out of place along the ficus-lined curb of Rodeo Drive. I am a few minutes early for my 2 p.m. audience with Carl Reiner, one of the legends of comedy, and I am going through my questions one last time.

Carolyn Morrell, a radio DJ at various stations for decades, was most recently a highly rated midday host in Boston. She was laid off early in the COVID-19 crisis. Sudden unemployment came as a shock, and in many ways, Morrell, who is in her Bucket years, mourned the loss of her dream job. “I’ve always loved music, and I had a lot of autonomy during my show. I got to meet and interview musicians, see concerts and theater, and talk about them on-air,” she says. “I also really missed the great people at the station.” One thing she didn’t miss? Her almost two-and-a-half-hour daily commute.

For 25 of my 61 years, I have struggled with anorexia. It has been akin to a broken leg in my life. I can be optimistic, carry out a normal daily routine, compete in triathlons, raise children and paint with passion. Nevertheless, I’m still dragging this leg around with me.

As I have watched my children deal with the sudden loss of life as they knew it this last month, it reminds me of the summer of 1968 when my father woke up one morning and dropped dead. My mother had died five years before. We were in a rental beach cottage with my stepmother, when the phone rang early in the morning. By the time the fogged had burned off, I had become a ward of the state. Then, as now, there were logistics to figure out. How to get home.

On week six of Covid-19, I, like many others across the country, was hearing from long lost friends, third cousins and elementary school classmates on Zoom. My niece had scheduled a family happy hour with aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. I had not seen many in the last two years. We, as a group, were from Maine, Hawaii, Tennessee and Massachusetts. I was a bit uneasy at the start of the Zoom meeting as family tensions over shared sea property lurked in the shadows.