Corinne and I are both photographers. I learned photography from my father on a huge, bulky press camera when I was a teenager more than forty years ago. She has been at it for about ten years. This interest brought us together.

We were each drawn to New Mexico by the clear air, the 90-mile views and the peace of the wide-open spaces. We met when a mutual friend asked me to teach Corinne how to use the computer in her photography. She quickly became a digital whiz. To display our work, we both used my website, HighWestGraphics.com. We hoped to earn a living together that way, working from home and traveling the breathtaking southwest to capture images.

When my mother-in-law suddenly died just weeks after arriving, Corinne comforted me. She gave me reason to keep living.

Photography didn't work out for us as a reliable money-making venture, so Corinne took a job as a cook in a fine-dining restaurant, working for her friend, the chef. Soon after beginning her new job – five months after we were married – Corinne experienced a painful lump on the side of her neck. It was so painful that I took her to the emergency room early one morning.