Nine years after saying ‘I do,’ I don’t simply remember the choice we made that day. I continue making it.
There is a moment in every love story that people celebrate.
The first meeting. The first kiss. The proposal. The wedding.
We remember those moments because they are easy to point to.
But they are not what sustains a marriage.
Nine years ago today, we said, “I do.”
Those words mattered.
But they were never the hardest part.
No one tells you that marriage is less often tested by extraordinary moments than by ordinary ones.
It is built in grocery stores, hospital waiting rooms, long workdays, quiet evenings, difficult conversations, and the thousand small opportunities to turn toward one another instead of away.
Love is sustained less by one extraordinary promise than thousands of ordinary decisions.
Choosing kindness when you’re tired.
Choosing patience when life is heavy.
Choosing honesty over assumption.
Choosing repair after misunderstanding.
Choosing laughter after difficult weeks.
Choosing to keep building, even when the blueprint changes.
If my younger self believed love was something you found…
My older self has learned it is something you practice.
Nine years later…I still choose you.
Not because every day is easy.
Not because every chapter has been gentle.
But because, after everything we’ve lived through, I know what love asks of us.
Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. The colors of the changing leaves. That crisp scent in the air, earth mingled with embers from bonfires. The cooler temperatures that dance on the line of perfection: comfortable in jeans and a cozy, oversized sweater.
And then there is the beauty of daybreak and sunset, a backdrop to all these autumn sensations. Rays of light catch the mist lingering in the air, and dew glimmers in the morning.
Beyond its natural beauty, autumn has always been a season of change. As a child and teenager, it meant settling back into the rhythm of school and activities after summer break. As an adult, it marked the beginning of the fourth quarter: the final thirteen weeks of finishing one business plan while preparing the next.
Driving to work on those early mornings, knowing the chaos waiting for me, I found calm in watching the sun rise. After a long day, the sunset offered another moment to pause.
Other beginnings have arrived in autumn, too, unfolding more organically than the resolutions we make on New Year’s Eve. Falling in love. Moving in together. Getting married. Bringing home a new puppy.
There have been more serious changes as well, like starting daily cancer treatments. But that is a story that deserves its own breathing room.
This photograph was taken on a special day in 2017. It marked a new beginning for me and for my fiancé, who was leaving his life in another country to build a new one in the United States with me.
Months of planning, navigating government forms and interviews, and hearing a mix of support and speculation from friends had brought us to this moment: leaving his home country together to begin our life in mine.
The memory of that day remains vivid. This photograph reminds me that a sunrise holds more than the promise of a new day. It reminds me that we can choose new beginnings at any time.
But what better time of year than autumn, and what better month than October?
He spoke about wills, final wishes, burial or cremation—the practical conversations that somehow feel impossible until they are suddenly necessary.
He is 76. Stage IV. Terminal. Less than a year, the doctors say.
Two years ago, I had cancer too. Stage II. I fought it. I survived it. Now I sit with the strange, specific weight of knowing exactly what that word costs from the inside, while watching my father carry a version of it I never had to face—the version where survival isn’t the expected outcome.
As he talked, I interrupted with my own story.
I told him about my mother. About how she left no will. No insurance. How everything fell to me. I thought I was explaining why those details mattered, but today I realize he wasn’t asking me to solve a problem. He was inviting me into one of the hardest conversations of his life.
That realization has been sitting heavily with me.
Not because I meant to be insensitive, but because I wish I had simply stayed with him.
This was the first time we had spoken since I called him in March 2024 to tell him my mother died. Over two years of silence, broken by two phone calls—one to tell him someone we both loved was gone, and one to tell me he is going too.
The strange thing is that today, it wasn’t his diagnosis that made me cry…
It was music.
I was building a playlist for my husband—something small, something mine to give him—and I caught myself pausing on opening tracks. A few notes in, and I already knew where a song was going. I started following the thread just to see where it led.
Stevie Wonder led to George Michael.
George Michael led to Janet Jackson.
Janet led to Michael Jackson.
Michael led to the Fender Rhodes.
The Rhodes led to the Hammond B3.
The Hammond led back to my childhood.
I could suddenly see my dad again—sitting at his keyboards, teaching me “96 Tears” and “House of the Rising Sun.” I can still hear the Leslie speaker swirling through the room. I can still hear Stevie Wonder playing somewhere in the house.
I realized something I had never put into words before:
The way I hear music isn’t accidental.
When I recognize a Rhodes within the first few notes…
When I notice that two songs share the same harmonic language…
When I care more about who played on a record than where it charted…
Those aren’t just my tastes.
They’re part of my father’s legacy.
He gave me that.
For years, I carried hurt. Some of it was justified. Some of it became habit. After my mother died, distance became easier than reconciliation. Time quietly passed while I assumed there would always be another chance to talk.
Most of us believe there’s always another tomorrow. For years I believed there would always be another tomorrow for this conversation. There wasn’t. Every year I spent guarding old wounds was a year I didn’t spend with my father.
Now, there may only be months.
That isn’t justice.
It’s just regret, arriving early and wearing a different name.
It’s amazing how quickly old arguments lose their weight when time becomes measurable.
The past hasn’t changed.
Neither has the hurt.
But something else has become more important.
I don’t want the last chapter of our story to be defined by the years we didn’t speak.
I want him to know that every time I hear Stevie Wonder, every time Eric Clapton comes on the radio, every time I recognize the sound of a Rhodes piano, I think of him.
Children inherit many things from their parents.
Sometimes it’s their eyes.
Sometimes it’s their smile.
Sometimes it’s a love of music so deeply rooted that decades later, a single chord can bring them home.
I don’t know how many conversations my father and I have left.
But I hope one of them is simply about music.
Because somewhere between Stevie Wonder and The Yardbirds, between a Rhodes piano and a Hammond B3, between Beatles and Stones, my father quietly gave me a part of myself.
Before he leaves this world, I want him to know that the way I hear music is one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.
