Illustration by Alex Siklos
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“Single Male. Six-foot-6-inches tall. Age 76. Looks like Superman.”
If this were an online dating profile, that’s how I’d start my husband’s profile. Swipe right if you’re interested in meeting Al, a most extraordinary man whom I married 38 years ago. A superhero who likely will be widowed by spring.
Al and I met before the era of dating apps, when chance meetings and blind dates were still de rigueur. I was selling my house privately. Al was a prospective buyer, a gentle giant who I intuitively knew I could trust. I flirted shamelessly as I escorted him room to room wearing yellow sweat pants and a hoodie. I couldn’t look any less attractive, but it turns out yellow is his favourite colour. We were both smitten. (“Al didn’t buy the house but he liked the contents,” my aunt said in her toast at our wedding two years later.)
I’m not certain who said the “love” word first. I probably had to pry it out with a crowbar. Certainly my mother loved Al, giving him the thumbs up behind his back on our first visit to my hometown. I was a nervous Nellie when it came to introductions to his large family. Oh, what to wear? We giggled like children standing in front a mirror, me modelling a pant suit and he a dress. Picture Superman in drag.
On the advice of his centenarian grandmother, Al took me camping, which I later learned was to test whether I had the backbone to endure hardship. Four months later he proposed and enjoying the outdoors has been the hallmark of our family life.
We married in 1987 and bought a bush lot along the Rideau Canal upon which to build a cottage. That first winter we lived in a tent trailer while we cleared the land, huddling together at night to keep warm as coyotes howled chillingly close. Don’t ever question my backbone, not then, not now.
I was pregnant with our son Patrick the summer of 1991 when Al built the cottage. By then we had set up house in a workshop he built two years prior. Water was pumped from the lake for cooking and showers under the stars. At night I hauled my very pregnant belly up a rickety wooden ladder to our bed in the loft.
We used to jest about playing the “get out of marriage free” card on our 50th anniversary in order to pursue younger partners. It was a joke, until suddenly it wasn’t.
The jealous me doesn’t want Al to fall in love again. The compassionate me hopes he finds a companion to walk with in these golden years.
Our intention was to live out our days together. All that changed in November, 2021, when I awoke one morning at the cottage with an abdominal cramp. Thirty minutes later Al was driving me to hospital.
The pain presented like a kidney stone, not something to suffer lightly. However the CT scan and radiologist confirmed the worst. Ovarian cancer would be my kryptonite.
Cancer tests a couple’s mettle. At the time you pledge to love someone through sickness and health, you may not fully understand the consequences of that commitment: 300 trips to hospital for surgeries, blood transfusions, chemo treatments and medical appointments. Suddenly my agenda became his with no end in sight, except now there is.
Al’s actions speak louder than his words. Verbal affirmations are seldom spoken but the loving care he has provided on this cancer journey speaks volumes.
But back to his suitability as a suitor. They say what you plant now, you will harvest later. That couldn’t be truer as Al enjoys the autumn of life. His next partner will get the best of him. After a career as a civil and mechanical engineer, Al now has time to enjoy the cottage for weeks on end and travel the world. A planned trip to Scotland has been put on hold, perhaps an opportunity for someone new.
Al is an audiophile with an ear for all genres of music. I once returned home to Chinese music blasting from auditorium-sized speakers that dominated our living room. Those speakers are now suspended from the cottage rafters where Sunday mornings are devoted to the classics. At bedtime we dim the lights to immerse in 30-minute playlists Al has curated.
You must love dogs if you decide to swipe right. Al and my dog Chimo, a Shiba Inu, are a package deal. Initially, Al wasn’t keen on another dog, but a year after my diagnosis I played the cancer card. Chimo (pronounced chee-mo) is a friendly way of greeting someone in Inuktitut, meaning special friend. He is my Chimo-therapy.
Tears are streaming down my face as I write. It’s 5 a.m. on the morning after my 67th birthday. Chimo is sitting on my feet. He knows. I don’t want to die. I’m going to miss my Superman. My son Patrick. Chimotherapy.
“I think it’s going to be the other way around,” Patrick says.
Janice Howard lives in Toronto.