Sometimes life blesses you with chance encounters with unique individuals that leave your world forever changed. These individuals possess such rare gifts that you simply cannot return to being the same version of yourself after meeting them. Our family lost one of those unique individuals recently—our beloved Nana.

Nana wasn’t our blood relative, but she might as well have been. She was as loved and cherished by my family as any biological member.

I first met Nana several decades ago while work...