There are times in life when everything we perceive as “normal” about it screeches to a halt. We’re at work or at the park with our 2-year-old, lazily pushing him on the swing when the call comes in—a loved one has suffered a calamity. We hustle home, throw a few things in a bag and either start making flight arrangements or hop in the car, “dropping everything.” Time and every other obligation and interest as we know it fades, and we enter an altered inner landscape where only one thing seems to matter. Or does it? On September 1, 1939,…