Or maybe not. Life is so messy.

When I saw John Choi at Ray's mom's funeral earlier this month, I asked how he was doing and he said things were difficult. I assumed that he was just talking about his commitments to various churches and organizations due to his inability to say no to anyone, but he explained that it was, in fact, his family. His mom had gone through treatment for liver cancer earlier this year, and he had just found out that his dad has metastatic prostate cancer. He looked weary.

My family had Thanksgiving at my sister's in-laws' place on Thursday. The original plan was to have it at my sister's house, but she called me last weekend and told me that plans had changed, that she'd just had a miscarriage. When I saw her on Thursday, I hugged her and told her that I was so sorry, and she said it was okay, but when she finally let go, she was crying and it wasn't okay.

Everyone did their best to be cheerful. During a conversation later that evening, my sister's mother-in-law was telling a (racist-in-a-Korean-way) story with interruptions by the brother-in-law and the father-in-law.

MIL: So she was talking about how it's so sad that black people get the worst of it. Some of their hair is so hard to manage, some of their skin is so dark, and some of them are so poor.

BIL: But they're so athletic.

FIL: Good dancers!

And the ridiculousness of his exuberance brought a smile to my sister's face and I was thankful for just that.

Since the holidays usually bring a sense of loneliness to the lonely - and at times, we're all a little lonely - I hope that we all at least get a smile for our troubles. And open endings can be second chances for the hopeless cases.