And so we lived in our cottage home, happily at first but with increasing challenges by the mid-90s. It started off slowly at first, during the winter of 1992-1993 when Sid had a slip-and-fall at work, on ice-ridden steps at the building's entrance (caused one winter by a frozen pipe bursting in the wee hours, and nobody yet doing anything about the ice build-up on the steps). This was the second "fall" of importance, I now realize looking back, ironically. Irony is the only word to use, because it was also a fall from the grip we had on our shared lives, and from his earlier foothold on making progress with work, with love, and with life itself. The fall seemed to cause him some back injury, initially an inconvenience which worsened more and more until it led to his being unable to work. After many months of wrangling with doctors and the Workers Compensation nightmare that was typical of these times, Sid's ongoing and unrelenting pain was found to be actually part of a previously-undiagnosed disease called fibromyalgia. And oh, how alienating and difficult the days and nights were for the two of us, when we had endured so many questions and so much prodding and poking, both medically (for him) and emotionally (for us both) about what was keeping him in pain and whether he could just "rise above" it all, to go back to work, to resume a so-called normal life. That normal life never did come back to us, and Sid never did return to work. And nothing in our shared lives was ever the same, once the insidious ways the disease took over. It eventually crept its fine winding tendrils into every nook and cranny of our lives, metastasizing until our relationship was also suffering, even when we weren't able to see or feel it. Things between us were not unloving, simply unrecognizable from previous functional states. And eventually, we had to acknowledge that we needed different things from what quality of life might remain, for each of us to grasp. Well, that is a bit oversimplifying what was extremely tough and complicated to understand, let alone process and deal with. And the rest, as they say, is history. Though I left that life behind, I never truly left him. That is how I honestly feel, and it is how I think most people would honestly feel if they truly love someone. You never really move "away" from that love, you just learn to live without it being the core of your heart, your contentment, which it once primarily was. You can find love again, but it doesn't mean you have stomped on and buried any love you have in your being for anyone else. I will never say goodbye to Sid, for that very reason. His story is not over. He had so much left to give, to receive too. And so in the stunning void of his loss, all I have left are stories. It's all any of us have. Of course you have your own story, about him, and so I would dearly appreciate hearing about it, about any of it. Feel free to (please) email me at andy_currie@email.com and share. I still have so more much to share, because Sid was a fun and glorious human being to be with, and we were blessed with many great memories and times in spite of hardships. He was not one to be defeated, or to passively look on as others were downcast with their own difficulties. He was the most kind, considerate, and helpful person I have ever known. To say that I love and miss him, is inadequate in itself -- and I cannot convey how it does not even begin to state the reality. The world is so much less now, than it was when he was around.