I was sitting in my office, procrastinating as usual by surfing around the web reading various news stories. ‘Brits still missing’ announced one, the day after the tsunami occurred, a tragedy that for me, here in America, was terrible but didn’t affect me on a personal level.

Until I saw a name I knew: Piers Simon. I had spoken to him three weeks before, had known, but forgotten, he was flying to Thailand for Christmas to visit his brother who was teaching there. Piers Simon. The words were blurry on the screen as I squinted to focus and my head filled with fog. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be the same one. These things don’t happen to people we know.

I had met Piers a few years before. He was a garden designer and had designed my garden in Westport, Connecticut, flying over from his home in England every few weeks to traipse around my garden and make me laugh with his stories. He was thirty-three. Tall, handsome, and the sweetest man I had ever met with an infectious giggle that was irrestistible. He quickly became a friend, staying in our spare room when he came over, jumping in the pool with the kids, sitting on the deck drinking a beer with me as the sun set.

I phoned his mother a few days later, holding it together until the end of the phone call when we both started crying. It didn’t seem real, and the grief was shocking to me, sweeping me up in its clutches and not letting go for months, playing an endless tape of memories of Piers in my head, over and over, but never enough.

He wasn’t a husband, a boyfriend, a best friend. He was someone I adored, but not inner circle, and I didn’t feel entitled to feel the way I did, it felt too much, I didn’t know who I could share it with. And so, as with all eventful emotional experiences in my life, I knew I had to write about it, to express it on the page as a means of getting over it.

But life never seems to go according to plan.

His legs pumped in protest, mini-sneakers drumming the base of the restaurant booth. His face was red with the effort of sustained screaming. He shoved and slapped at his father with his adorable little hands. He was sitting right next to me. I had murder and a bacon cheeseburger on my mind. In that order.

The kid’s father, though, was the very picture of patience. He was an obvious believer in the progressive parenting philosophy that exchanges corporal punishment for repeating requests—in this case, “Eat your dinner, please”—a thousand times to no effect whatsoever. And then, as a last resort, unleashing the dreaded “time out.”

But this kid had long since sacked and pillaged the time out. He was psychotic. He had superhuman reserves of furious energy. And rather than box the little bastard’s ears and tell him he had two choices, eat or starve, the father continued trying to bring him under control by absorbing one-two combos and murmuring in soothing tones.

What should a normal person do when he bears witness to such a mind-numbing example of parental overindulgence? Roll his eyes and shake his head, most likely. Exchange whispered comments with his companions. At most, maybe ask to be re-seated on the far side of the dining room, away from the offending brat, or else just get up and walk out in a lame protest no one will notice anyhow. Any of these, even the last, would probably be considered a normal reaction.

Going home and writing a book probably would not. Nevertheless, that’s what I did.