After returning from Canada it took me over six months to return to my Canada diary.  A part of my reluctance is a fear of living through it again. Another is heartache of it all collapsing. Another is the weakness I feel of wanting to go back and do it properly – now that the complication of my ex- is history for me.  It’s an unresolved dream and revisiting my diary stirs it all up.  In that six months I had become single for the first time in over ten years, built up a strong bond with my 2 year old son, and experienced a near-breakdown (which I have yet to leave behind) as I come to terms with her leaving me for someone who in terms of age is probably who she should have married in the first place.  Thank God my son loves me unconditionally.  My diary was part of a file of everything I needed to make it in Canada.  What the file could not contain was the support anyone needed.

 After losing my wife no amount of elastoplast was going to cover up that wound.  It is one act to walk away but another to arrive somewhere else.  My angry disbelief before I left led me to feel that since I was losing my wife I might as well go – I had nothing to lose.  But before I left we came together to find a path to Canada – that chink of light of hope took me to Canada believing I could possibly persuade her to reconsider her declaration.  She fuelled my hope with words about visiting me in Victoria for Christmas, that she could change her flight to Ottawa to Victoria, that I would see Harry at Christmas.  It was the last thread of support I had left over from when I first completed the dream. 

 Six months later the separation dominated my life.  My wife never mentioned Canada.  Not once over six months.  It felt like history had been rewritten.  For sure, she had moved on from that commitment to a new life – but what had she embraced to make the change so complete?  It is oh so straightforward to let go of something – a new future for instance – if you have something else to grab hold of – another new future for instance.  At first I wondered why but when I put the jigsaw together I realised she had carved her own future without me, with another man.  That gave her the strength to walk away from all our plans, dreams, shared life.  Canada was too big a dream for me to walk away from two weeks before I boarded the plane - I had to live my dream.  When I came back, I had no other concept to assist me to etch a new life.  There was no new relationship for me, no job, no home.