Jordan Kirchner
Mackenzie Walton's first Father's Day without her dad was shaping up to be tough. Then the marketing emails hit.
"I saw some 'Don't forget Dad!' messaging and panicked because I hadn't bought him a present, which led to some ugly crying in the bathroom at work when I abruptly remembered why I hadn't been shopping yet," the Cincinnati-based freelance editor told NPR over email.
That was in 2007. And when Walton's mom passed away just shy of a decade later, she said she really became aware of how "relentlessly brutal that stretch of spring can be when you don't have parents in your life, for whatever reason."