At the end of July, two summers ago, I received a direct message from an acquaintance I knew only via LinkedIn. Barely, at that. She wrote, “I’d sincerely love to write a book with you: one side in French and one side in English about our tales in education.” This person was Dan. I was flattered, but cautious.

We both had no clue of what was about to unfold.

A Zoom call in August lead to increasingly extended conversations. These became daily occurrences. We talked endlessly about teaching and everything else beneath the sun, moon, and stars. Because we teachers are learners first and foremost. And there is always something new to be learned.

We quickly grasped an extraordinary connection: My youngest brother and Dan share their names. There’s more: they both hold the same birthday: January 22. And we know profound loss: both Daniel (my brother) and Philippe (Dan’s beloved long-time partner and fiancé) each suffered with brain tumors that became the cause of their deaths.

Make what you will or will not from such synchronicities. For me, something was emerging that demanded attention. Here lay a thread worth following. Chance or destiny? It didn’t matter. It just needed to be followed.

We both dove headlong into this relationship because we just knew. No rationale. No logical checklist. Instead, another kind of knowing guided us. One of witnessing, of being quiet and still. Of listening to the whispers of forest and sky. Dan and I knew we had to go and step into the darkness of the unknown. There was no other choice. And we did not worry.

There’s a wise saying of which Anne Lamott speaks: “the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” In a world filled with attorneys and financial advisers, we chase certainty a lot. Maybe too much. The Buddhists teach that there are only two things of which we can be certain: that we are going to die and that we do not know when.

With so much uncertainty otherwise, it seemed time to summon up some brave vulnerability, calm a busily thinking mind, and chase faith for a spell.

The summer shifted toward fall. Dan and I communicated daily… voluminously. The process of that initially hazy knowing slowly fleshed itself out into more clearly focused forms.

October brought me to visit with my mom and Irving in Boston. Toward the end of my stay, I told them that I was in a relationship with Dan. All with a touch of anxious trepidation… what would they say about someone I’d only known from a distance of 3,000 miles?

My mom’s and Irving’s responses surprised me. Both were visibly overjoyed. It was as if each had silently been hoping for me to find a partner all along. Yet there was something more. Somehow, my mom knew—without knowing—that Dan and I needed to be together. Somehow, she instantly sensed the intricate bond that had formed between us. And perhaps that she no longer needed to worry about me lacking a companion.

With faith in hand, a month later I flew from Los Angeles to Montréal for nine days. This would be our first meeting in person. Spirit and soul already were intricately intertwined. That first evening’s meeting at the airport only confirmed what we already knew. We had come together, to walk the long path, side by side.

I can’t say this is a roadmap to follow for everyone or anyone. Kids… don’t try this at home. But it was the one for us to follow. Maybe it has a bit to do with the fact that we both had walked, with genuine wholeheartedness, down paths with others. And that we had learned from those who came before. And from ourselves.

Those nine days passed not quickly, but better, timelessly. On one of those days, November 24th, an icily cold afternoon, we took a long walk up on Mont-Royal. It was my first full experience of the crystalline light that often illuminates Montréal.

During that week, my mom pocket dialed me. We listened for a few minutes as she spoke in her ever sweet manner to a hospice nurse. I’m beyond grateful that Dan was able to hear her kind and generous voice. That was who my mom was to everyone. A month later, mom was gone. I have this strong sense that once she knew I was going to be ok, that I had found Dan, then she could cease her worrying about her son—she was a professional worrier, my mom—and let go. So she could finally find her final peace.

In spite of being a professional worrier, my mom also understood those Buddhist principles: that we are going to die and that we don’t know when. The implication is this: what will we choose to make of our days until that known unknown day arrives? I am a witness to how my mom made the very best of her days.

This is a love story. When you dive into the sea of love, it contains both light and darkness. You cannot know one without the other. Grief is evidence that you have loved and loved profoundly. To not love in this limited time of consciousness on this earth… well, for me that is madness.

As that winter progressed into spring and then another summer, and into another fall and so on, much transpired as Dan and I have continued to walk hand and hand. The heights of joy; the depths of hardship. And everything in between. We just keep going. There is too much beauty to experience entirely in a lifetime… so we take in as much as we can. And that is good enough.