Written by Linda Lee Kaye, Freelance Writer

I recently returned from my second glorious trip to Paris. I spent eight days in an outdoor photography studio with nine other amateurs and a professional teacher, all of us eager to take pictures in Paris and become better photographers. It had been 12 years since I visited The City of Light for the first time, but the outcome was the same: I renewed my secret vow that someday, I would live in Paris!

Those two trips to Paris are like bookends embracing 12 of the most transformational years of my life--so far. During those years, I worked harder and longer hours than I’ve ever worked in two back-to-back jobs.

I discovered that my true purpose in life is to make a difference for others. And I met and married the man who would become the most beloved of all those I’ve ever loved. I got more capable than I have ever known myself to be and found courage that I didn’t know I had. I was happy and fulfilled.

This second trip to Paris represented an emotional milestone. My husband, Michael, had visited Paris as a Restaurant School student years before we met. A trained chef and a lover of gourmet food and wine, he had vowed to go back to France someday. When we started dating, our mutual love of Paris and French food and wine sealed the deal, and we knew we would go back together. Like so many people, however, we talked about and looked forward to that “someday” until it was too late.

In August 2005, I suddenly and tragically lost Michael to leukemia before we were married five years. We didn’t even know that he had the pernicious disease. In fact, it’s still unknown what triggered the dormant gene that would wreak havoc throughout his body within 19 days. While his team of physicians pulled out all the stops, no treatment had any impact. They just couldn’t save him. The unexpected loss of my 55-year-old husband was devastating. The weekend he got so sick, we were just days away from closing the contract on a second home in New Orleans’ French Quarter, our Paris close to home. I was shockingly reminded of John Lennon’s famous line, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

The most important decision that I made the morning Michael died was that I would have his life make a profound difference—for his family and friends, for me and for the community. I would celebrate the life of this charismatic and loving man as a way of mourning his death. Starting with his funeral and for the next 24 months, I created multiple and sometimes atypical pathways to express the best of his character. One of my proudest moments came when an art quilt I commissioned to pay tribute to him was juried into the most prestigious quilt show in North America. On view in Houston for a week, more than 55,000 people from around the world got to see it, photograph it and appreciate it as a personal collage of a special human being’s life.

During those same two years, I also continued to work full-time as a consultant and take care of Michael’s aging father. Then, I lost my father in January of 2006 and Michael’s father followed in August 2007, just three weeks before his only son’s anniversary date. The successive deaths of the three most important men in my life shattered any illusions that I harbored about my own immortality. It may sound trite, but living life to the fullest took on a long-overdue renewed urgency and I was compelled to redesign my future. “Someday” was no longer a part of my vocabulary.

I left the security of my consulting job of more than ten years and started a freelance writing business. I traveled across the country to spend time with old friends whom I hadn’t seen in many years. I enrolled in two separate learning programs to accelerate my growth as a writer and my capacity to build wealth through entrepreneurship. Much to my brother’s delight and approval, I finally took up the game of golf. Saturday mornings are now spent learning to ride English saddle--I’m determined to experience the wind in my hair at a full gallop across an open meadow yet to be determined. And last, but not least, I will take good pictures, once and for all, not only in Paris but also in Spain later this year.

In my research about widowhood, I learned that the average age of the American widow is 56-yearsold. That was exactly my age when I lost Michael. On my Paris trip, seven of the nine participants were women. Four of us were widows, and one woman had been widowed twice. Our average age at widowhood: 55-years-old. I wasn’t at all mentally prepared for this rite of passage in mid-life. Perhaps you aren’t either. Losing your spouse will happen indeed, at some unspecified time in the future, better known as “someday.” Take it from me: the best thing you can do for yourself and your family is live life, love, travel, go, do, play, dance, whatever it takes to fulfill your dreams - now, today.

P.S. I’m in the process of buying an apartment in Paris. A bientot!