It’s been a long time since my last post. Many golden hours have come and gone. I must tell you why I’ve been gone.

On the day of the spring equinox — my husband’s favourite day of the year, when the season holds the promise of birds migrating back to their nesting grounds, and new growth emerges from the earth — he became sick, and never quite recovered. Then he lost a lot of weight.

On the summer solstice, he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. And then he died four weeks later. Gone from this earth, forever.

My own world disappeared underneath my feet.

In these past four hard months, as I have grieved and breathed and somehow emotionally faced each day, I’ve also rearranged my life at home, to help me cope with this sudden new reality. All the tasks we used to share as partners in life, are my responsibilities now. So I’ve been compelled to put order to things.

The other day while cleaning out the cupboard, I found the pillow cover I bought during our honeymoon in Crete. Tags still on, still tucked inside its original bag.

In my memory, I can still hear the shopkeeper try to translate the Greek words for me, in her broken, helpful English. There is no road to happiness. Happiness is the road.

It was the perfect keepsake for our journey. We had already traveled part of life together as colleagues, then as friends, then as a couple joining our worlds. Now we were starting a new chapter of our relationship together, our married life. The future was full of promise, like spring emerging.

From time to time since then, I’ve taken this keepsake out of the cupboard, admired it, but never bought a pillow for it. An incomplete project. Five years’ worth of good intentions. As it turns out, the whole of our married life.

So, the other day I went downtown and bought a pillow. And then finally, put our honeymoon pillow on the couch.

I felt sad, wishing my husband could see it. Why did it take me so long to do this simple thing?

But then something in me softened. Maybe I felt his hand gently on my shoulder. Maybe I heard his tender voice, the suggestion not to be so hard on myself, not to have regrets. After all, we’d been busy living life! We’d been enjoying all our time together. Every minute together. Living, loving, working, traveling, walking the beach at golden hours with our pup. Nothing important had been lost.

My perspective shifted. I saw the pillow now with a different meaningful purpose: to serve as an unexpected gift to my future self, to appear again at a time when I most needed to be reminded of love. To help me remember that happiness is not something you find, or lose, but something you create, something you are.

There is no road to happiness. Happiness is the road.

 

I have so loved every step of the road together, James Malcolm Martin. Thank you for all of this happiness.