It’s not easy to share this news, but we have decided to postpone our wedding from this summer to next year: 2025. You can clear your calendar of our original date of July 27, 2024.

And then, finally, the goodbye. 

He was kind, as always, and then he was gone. 

Meanwhile, James and I were talking about getting engaged. We had been dating for nearly ten years – through high school, college, and into the years after we graduated – and engagement felt like the natural next step.

One day we were working from the office, and the next we were in lockdown in our homes, looking out at the world and wondering what to make of it all. For me, as for most, this time became a period of reflection and deep introspection as my busy life slowed to a stop.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” I ask on one of our walks around the neighborhood.

Ethan is silent for a few minutes before answering, “Yes. I think we have multiple soulmates, and maybe even different kinds.”

Our second week of work, I set up a recurring meeting with Ethan called “existential crisis”. The meeting invite goes something like this: We can change the name of this invite, I just really like the idea of every other week a calendar reminder popping up that says “reminder: existential crisis in 15 minutes” and then I can be like “snooze”.

Just over seven years ago, I walked into my first day at my first job out of college and met the man who would someday be my husband: Ethan Laser. He was wearing a suit and an I-take-myself-seriously kind of look on his face, but mostly he had no idea what he was doing. Neither did I.

If, at any point before April of this year, you happened to ask me how I thought I would get engaged, in a graveyard wouldn’t have made the list. Let alone in a graveyard, with a headstone with my name on it, while a mourning woman took our photos. But I suppose that’s the beauty of life: sometimes it just doesn’t go quite how you expect it to.