On October 30, 2013 I was at work when I got the call from my home.

“It’s a beautiful day and I want to walk. Leave work now and meet me at the Post Office. That’s where I’m walking to, and then we can walk down to the river.”

I looked at my colleague Joanne, who nodded and said, “When your husband says leave work to go for a walk with him, you’d better go.”

So I did. It was a very nice fall afternoon but JD was needing constant oxygen, and so frail with his body wracked with cancer that I worried all along the drive home.

He surprised me with his good humour and his ability to walk and we enjoyed ourselves very much. We’d had so many sad and tense days since his diagnosis that this felt almost like the old, pre-cancer JD And me.

He talked about our moving to the Post Office, and how he would sit on the bench on the other side of the Mill Pond, and I could meet him there every afternoon once I got off work. Part of me knew this would never happen, and part of me willingly went along with the fantasy – an escape for the moment. He wanted me to take a picture of him pointing to the spot where he would be waiting for me.

Two weeks later, on November 13, he would lay dying in the ICU. I think often of that last walk. I am so glad I did cut my work day short to be with him on what turned out to be our last walk together.