When I started this series of interviews many cautioned me that black people would not want to talk to me. Wrong. As a matter of fact, after I started sending out emails, expressing my intentions to write about these issues, the positive response was overwhelming.

To be honest, people of color talked to me a long time ago, in various workplace settings. I remember vividly one lady who was a nurse and who told me -- wiping her tears -- that she was refused work because some would not accept a black woman as a caregiver. Or, when we were showing puppies, I was asked by a visibly embarrassed woman if her biracial child was allowed to play with them. Many similar scenarios have haunted me for years.

There is an old Romanian saying similar to, “It is only the dead who do not return.”  Indeed, in the aftermath of tragedy and life loss there is nothing we can do for the person who is no longer with us.