As someone who spends a lot of time in front of his computer, I was so pleasantly surprised to run across some really old pre-iPhone pix I snapped of Ken and me. The one above is dated 28 days after we met in 2001. The quality is terrible because it was taken with the then-state-of-the-art webcam attached to my bulky desktop computer which sat on a corner desk that eclipsed the rest of my dining room in my third-floor walk-up in Ravenswood.

I’m also so very pleasantly surprised that seeing this pic makes me smile. Man, we were young! And we were head over heels in love with each other. I see that sparkly love and so much more when I look at these two young men. I can remember bits and pieces of–if not that morning–mornings like it as we spent more and more time together.

I’m reminded that as someone who doesn’t relish change (who does?) I was so sure of Ken that I gleefully agreed to leave Chicago and move to Los Angeles with him. As I’ve written before, it was the bravest thing I’d ever done up to that point. But with a loving partner who made everything an adventure, it wasn’t so difficult.

When I look back on our life together, I’m incredibly proud of it. All of it. But probably the difficult times most of all. We showed each other that we were exactly who we thought we were to each other, our friends and families.

So much of my life–maybe all of it now–is seen through the lens of losing Ken. His illness and death were painful, of course, but with time I’ve come to think of them as educational, as well. I wouldn’t be who I am if I had experienced what I did with him, as well as all the other experiences that make up the whole of me.

But, who I have become started at the time this picture was taken. I see two people ready to take on the world together and fight for a life together as long as they could have it.

And that they did.

What a lovely reminder that is so very Ken that the journey is always worth it, no matter the destination.