by Genevieve Georget

Created on: July 08, 2008

Ernest Hemingway once said, "If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it". I first read this in my second year of university and I was highly bothered by it. It seemed to go against everything that I knew to be true as the hopeless romantic that I was. Didn't love always prevail in the end? Wasn't love the very reason that we had happy endings in the first place? While I've stood by my beliefs about love to this day...I've also never forgot that quote and how much it disrupted the very core of my being.

Last week, I had the most extraordinary day with a new friend of mine...the father of one of my dearly beloved colleagues. Her father has lived in the West Coast for most of his life and was recently in town visiting for the past month or so. He came by the Gallery where we both work last week to spend the day and for the first time, I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful man that I had heard so much about. The three of us went on a tour of the vaults, visited the restoration lab, had lunch and after he had spent hours upon hours strolling through the European Galleries, the three of us sat together talking and overlooking the gardens for awhile. While we were there, it suddenly occurred to me what Hemingway must have been going through when he uttered those words. And just like that...my heart broke.

As much I adored meeting her father and spending the day with him, I would have given anything to not be meeting him under the circumstances that we were; as he flew to Ottawa, he was leaving behind a moment in his life that we all know is coming but, for the sake of our own sanity, we pursue life in spite of it. This past June, his wife died. He was here with his family to make the days and nights more bearable, along with everything else that becomes too hard to endure when you lose someone that you love.

If you can believe it, he and his wife had been together for 64 years...an accomplishment that is so rare in this day and age. He was now living in a world that no longer included his best friend and that sadness seemed to follow him everywhere he went. Of course, he still smiled and laughed and not only found joy in others...but brought joy to others, especially to me. But when you watched him, you could almost see the outline of the person that should have been standing next to him, holding his hand and looking at him longingly in a way that only a wife of 64 years could. You could feel her presence yet at the same time, you just knew

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