Only Connect

All of us probably have had the feeling, at one point or another, that our lives are a series of disconnected fragments—a loss unmourned, a professional identity we never returned to, a move cross-country. How do we connect these things with a sense of ourselves as whole beings? How do we integrate who we were with who we are?

Here we present two stories of integration. In the first, a widow and widower (reciting separate but parallel kaddishes) are surprised by joy in finding each other. In the second, a psychologist goes across one ocean and 55 years to pick up a little girl—herself—who has long been stranded there.