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In 2008 I had a job interview with a software engineer named Jonah. I mentioned that it was also the name of my son. He said, “For some reason, no one can remember the name Jonah. They always call me Noah.”

Today I learned of the existence of Noah and the Whale, a London pop-music band. (Their song, “5 Years Time,” came up on my Pandora station, and it’s a good one.) Their name is a play on the story of Jonah and the whale.

It’s true that Jonah and Noah are both biblical boy’s names, and that one is an anagram of 80% of the other’s letters. But why are they easier to confuse than, say, Caleb and Abel?

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It’s Mother’s Day, and the third anniversary of the day my mom died. How like her to make her final exit at this time of year, ensuring we’d never thoughtlessly skip observing the day, or enjoy it too much without feeling some pangs of loss for her. When I was growing up she joked often about her plans to be “a burden” on her children in her old age. The timing of her death is a kind of extension of that running joke.

Three years ago, when my mom died, I wrote “I will miss her” — not much of a stretch, and of course it’s been true. I had grown accustomed to long phone conversations with her once or twice a week, as I commuted to and from my distant job (at Danger, where an important perk was free cell phone calls, which made the long commute more tolerable).

In April, a few weeks before she died, I wrote my epic seven-part blog series “A boy and his dog,” which I was eager to share with my mom. She was a big fan of my writing and I was a big fan of her praise, which she had a lot of for my still-new blog. Little did I know that she had begun her final decline. She’d been in and out of hospitals and a nursing home for several weeks, but we still thought it was temporary and she’d be returning home before long. Meanwhile I offered to read my story to her over the phone, and was annoyed when she kept putting me off. I didn’t realize that her ability to focus on a story, or even remain on the phone for more than a couple of minutes, was at an end.

My long drive-time conversations were over, and soon the fun started to drain out of going to work at Danger. The most avid member of my writing audience was gone and soon I wasn’t writing quite as much. In spite of her joking, the only way in which my Mom ever was a burden was by being absent.

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A few days before our first son, Jonah, was born, my cousin Danny died of cancer at 52. So when it came time to give Jonah his Hebrew name, with the consent of my cousin Diane — Danny’s widow — we named him in part after Danny.

Danny was an Amtrak employee and a lifelong lover of trains. What we didn’t know when we chose his name for Jonah was that his favorite place in the whole world to watch trains was Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, Pennsylvania — just minutes from where my wife grew up and where my in-laws still live. He loved it so well that he wrote online articles about his love of trains under the pseudonym Al Tuner. After Danny died, a bench was dedicated in his memory in the spot where (we only recently learned) he would sometimes sit all through the night, waiting for trains to trundle by, brakes asqueal, jotting down their engine numbers in a notebook.

Last week, during our trip to see Andrea’s family, we finally taught Jonah and Archer the significance of their Hebrew names and visited Horseshoe Curve and Danny’s bench. Fittingly, a train trundled by, brakes asqueal, as this picture was taken.

First meeting of the things-named-for-Danny club

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Two years ago, when Jonah graduated from preschool, I wrote about how he unhesitatingly volunteered half a piece of candy to his little brother, who hadn’t gotten any.

Well, Archer just graduated from the same preschool, and at the party on Saturday he was the one to win a Swedish fish in a mock fishing game only for the new grads.  At once, and without a word, he brought it over to Jonah, tore it in half, and shared.

I was stunned — even more so when Archer informed me that he shared because he remembered (despite being three at the time!) Jonah doing the same for him.

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