Iceland, Six Months Later

Robert passed on May 25, 2025. Exactly six months later, I boarded an overnight flight to Reykjavik.

I stood at Skógafoss in freezing horizontal rain. The water roared so violently my sternum vibrated with it.

I was 59 years old. Widowed. Exhausted from seven months of caregiving and hospital corridors.

And yet, standing in that cold spray, I took the first full breath that didn’t feel like a cinder block was sitting across my ribs.

I wasn’t magically cured of grief. Grief doesn’t disappear; it reshapes you. But for the first time in five years, my identity was no longer solely defined by an illness.

She was still in there. The woman who loved wind, who loved road trips, who loved being awake to the world.

Starting over doesn’t mean your love ended. It means you are giving yourself permission to honor the life you still have.