I married Corinne ten months before she got her cancer diagnosis. We had known each other for nearly a year. I was 55 and she was eleven years younger. In our own ways, we had both been around the block before.

I married Corinne eighteen months after Linda died with breast cancer.

Corinne had been married twice before. She had lived through a rough adolescence, then had created a thrilling and dramatic intercontinental life for herself. Corinne had to overcome her hard-earned fear of men to marry me. As we began to get serious about each other, a close friend warned Corinne that I wasn't her type; she responded, "Good. Because I haven't done very well with my type."

After Linda's death, I had expected that I would live the rest of my life lonely. I had freely committed to take in Linda's then 94 year-old mother, and to spend my life caring for her. I made plans that assumed she would outlive me.

Corinne brought joy into my life, a life that had been devastated by loss.