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I was living like a monk. My condo was going on the market, and it had to look like no one lived there.  Two days prior to the first showing, I puffed all pillows and made sure there wasn’t a speck of dust on the hardwood floors. No dirty dishes in the sink or dishwasher. I removed all landline phones, wastebaskets, shampoo and conditioner in the shower, extra rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms, my electric toothbrush, hid all medications, tax records, jewelry, folders and papers and pared down to one computer on my desk. I put these items...

We live in a world where we are bombarded with help and information that can move freely around the world faster than a wagging tongue. Need to verify a fact? Google it. Want to find the one bra you love that’s no longer for sale at your favorite store? Look online. Struggling to put a bookcase together? Fix your T.V. or printer? Do this, says one website; try that, says another. YouTube offers videos for even more detailed explanations. Then consider the countless people we know who are willing to throw out their help and favors faster than Donald Trump...

We meet them on airplanes, trains, by sharing a counter at a coffee bar and maybe waiting in a long line at the grocery store or to buy a ticket to a movie or play. Or, sometimes, we meet when we’re a captive audience for an extremely long period at a surprising time—while waiting for our car to be fixed or being stuck with a sick family member in a hospital emergency room.  They look at us, we look at them and rather than continue with our heads buried in a book, magazine, Smartphone, iPad, newspaper or waiting for the...

It’s 2 a.m. Margaret, who has gotten up for the third time that night to go to the bathroom, drags her walker across the hardwood floor and crawls back into the king-sized bed that she shares with Barbara and her beau, Fixup. This is not a ménage à trois but an end-of-life arrangement. We spend our last days leaning against a row of pillows and tucked under a thick comforter. There’s a stack of all our books — our reading tastes are very different, a place for Margaret’s wine and chocolate, Fixup’s sleep-apnea machine and mask, which makes him look like...

Early in our careers as journalists, we discovered that we both loved writing about family business, and each wanted to write a book on the subject. We agreed to join forces to make the project more realistic.  We knew each other but not well, so we needed a big dose of hope to believe that we’d get along writing together, sometimes in close quarters. We also hoped our sample chapter and outline would appeal to a literary agent and eventually to a publisher who would give us a go-ahead and generous advance.    All our hopes became reality when the...