Last Saturday night, on my twenty-minute drive home from a concert downtown by our South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, my body singing with the sounds of oboe and violin and trumpet, my mind enjoying the quiet of the nearly empty city streets, Elvis, a heart throb from my high school years, soared mournfully into life on the radio:

I don’t want to be alone

Help me make it through the night

Please, don’t let me stay alone

Help me make it through the night.

words by Kristoffer Kristofferson

There are times, 996 days later, that tears just flow.