Geography of Love

I walked along the isles of the bookstore, browsing, gliding my finger tips across the spines. Waiting to connect with a title by way of gravitational pull. I stopped. A book seemingly out place, perched against the other neatly stacked books as if it was the one waiting. Its cover spoke, "Geography of Love". I listened, and without further inquisition I added it to my purchases.

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I spent most of yesterday at the coffee shop indulging in cafe lattes and mochas while reading the book 'Geography of Love' by Glenda Burgess with Yo-Yo Ma faintly playing in the background. I was hooked, and could barely pry my eyes away from the pages. I couldn't. I wouldn't. I didn't, until I knew the entire story from start to finish.

I was moved to the very core of my being and cried as I turned each page of the last few chapters, reading with a sense of pause and knowing of what was about to come. My eyes swelling with tears even now as I reminisce on that journey. My emotions catapulting into uncontrollable tears as Ken interacted with his children in his last moments. Even I was confounded by my own reaction since I would be considered more "emotionally reserved". A buried inner soul yearning of a fatherly connection of this magnitude had surfaced. Something I hadn't given much thought over the years. In that moment I felt somewhat cheated as if I missed out on something, but, at the same time overwhelmed with a deep feeling of love as I relived Ken and Glendas private family moments.

The intensity of the latter part of their story didn't overshadow their initial meeting of the hearts when they first met and got to know each other. If anything it set the premise for a magical union etched in love, passion and reverence. This story was more than a man battling cancer. It was an ode to the love he expressed and received, and to the strength he embodied as a man, a husband and father.