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After the tour, he leads us back inside and sets us up with a tasting. The wines are exquisite. I mark my favorites on the card provided and buy a case to take home.
Graham purchases a bottle of the Pinot Noir and we order salads for lunch.
We settle at a table outside and he pours us each a glass while we wait for our food.
“This was fun. Thank you for bringing me out here,” I say.
“It was my pleasure.”
“I never thought I’d see the day Balsam Ridge had its own winery.”
“We have a distillery, too. We’re becoming all kinds of civilized around these parts.”
I laugh.
“This would be a beautiful place for a wedding,” I muse.
“Yeah, I remember when Heather and I were looking for a venue. There wasn’t a lot to choose from back then. We settled for a church ceremony and a reception at my folk’s place.”
“How long we’re you two married?” I ask.
“Not long enough,” he answers.
Why did I ask that?
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” I apologize.
“It’s okay. It was hard for me to talk about at first, but I’m at peace with it now. We were married six years. She was diagnosed with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer a week after our fourth wedding anniversary.”
“That must have been a shock.”
“It was. She had been feeling poorly for a while. We just thought she had a low immune system. She was always tired, feverish, and became winded easily. She brushed it off as allergies. I mean she was a healthy twenty-five-year-old woman. We never considered it could anything more serious. Until one day I came up behind her while she was at the stove cooking. I picked her up to twirl her around and kiss her when I felt a lump on the side of her right breast close to her armpit. It hadn’t been there before. She called the next day and made an appointment with the doctor. It was stage four and had already spread to her liver and lungs.”
“Oh my goodness. That’s awful. What did they do?” I ask.
“There wasn’t much they could do. They talked about a mastectomy, but even with that and chemotherapy, they only gave her a year maybe a year and a half to live. She decided not to endure the surgery. It would be too painful, and the recovery would eat into the time she had left. I fought her on that. I was praying for a miracle and I wanted to do every single thing possible to fight. I was worried more about the length of her days, but she was focused on the quality of the days she had left.”
“So, she didn’t get any treatment?” I ask.
“She agreed to the chemotherapy. For me. She took three rounds and each time she got weaker and sicker. When they did a scan and saw that it had spread to lesions on her brain and to her bones, despite the aggressive chemo, we stopped the treatment.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was. I felt like we were giving up, but my mom sat me down and told me that I could ask her to keep taking the chemo and it may or not extend her life a few weeks, but those weeks would be spent with her too sick to enjoy any time with the people she loved. Or I could spend what time she had left, loving her, laughing with her and making more memories. Memories of peace, instead of sickness. So we stopped everything and brought her home to palliative care. They kept her pain-free and comfortable until the end. She lived another three months.”
I feel a tear roll down my cheek. I can see the love in his eyes and the pain in his heart as he talks of her.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur.
His eyes meet mine and he smiles.
“I’m not. I was a lucky man to be the one she loved.”
She was the lucky one. How blessed it is to have been loved like that.
“Do you miss her?” I ask.
“Always will, but I don’t spend my time thinking about what could have been. I appreciate the time I had with Heather, I treasure our memories, but I don’t live in the past. Not anymore.”
A server arrives with our lunch, breaking the tense moment. She refills our wine glasses before she walks back inside.
Picking up my glass, I swirl the dark liquid and bring it to my nose. I inhale the aroma before bringing it to my lips and taking a sip.
Graham watches me as I savor the wine.
“Good?”
I lick my lips.
“So good.”
We dig in and mom was right, the fig and pear salad is to die for.
“They have concerts out here on the weekends. We should come back,” he suggests.
“I’d like that. Thank you for bringing me here today and telling me about Heather.”
“I’m happy to tell you anything about my life, Taeli. All you have to do is ask,” he says.
And I believe him.
