Page 65 - 05_June-2025

illustration COLTON PONTO
Love Letters
THE CITY
OF BAD
ENDINGS AND
BEAUTIFUL
BEGINNINGS
Love, illness and a return home helped me
reimagine what a full life could look like
by BENJAMIN HERTWIG
NINE YEARS AGO I WROTE an essay for The New
York Times’ Modern Love about the implosion of my first
marriage. I received a firehose of emails. Strangers all
over the world sent me their own stories and a couple
propositions too. Dozens of well-intentioned people
assured me I would find true love again, but all I wanted
to do was leave Edmonton.
I wanted to leave because my marriage had ended in
the way that many marriages end — slowly at first, then
all at once. Suddenly we were standing in the lobby of the
court building with fresh divorce papers. I once loved how
Edmonton’s hot summer days would sometimes end in a
chorus of thunder and lighting. How winter days were an
opportunity to watch the falling snow and eat food by the
fire with family and friends. The sky was still familiar, but
the city stopped feeling like home. The city of champions,
the city of abundant parking lots and potholes, the city
of broken promises and a failed marriage, only reminded
me of endings.
The west coast greeted me with its
humid embrace, and I fell in love by the
ocean. Céline was everything I needed in
a partner: smart, compassionate, fiercely
loyal, kind. Sharing life with her was like
being born into a fresh world. We got our
hands dirty in our first garden, pricked
thumbs on blackberry brambles, made
love under the evening stars, swam
ourselves clean in the nighttime ocean
as bioluminescence shot sparks all over
our naked bodies. We got married, and I
felt like the luckiest goddamned guy on
the planet.
But even good things are complicated.
At first I thought I’d pinched a nerve
playing basketball. My left leg was doing
funny things. Seeing a neurologist in the
middle of the pandemic wasn’t easy, and
I shrugged the pain away. Then the pain
got worse — spasms that felt like grab-
bing an electric fence on my childhood
farm, but stronger and unavoidable.
Bladder issues, blurry vision. The doctors
eventually found lesions on my brain,
lesions on my spine. Under this new
reality, Vancouver was simply not a place
we could afford to stay. There was much
we would miss. The friends whose lives
had blended with our own, the cherry
blossoms in springtime, sandy beaches in
summer, the snow-topped mountains, the
Japanese maple leaves.
In Edmonton, you have to look a bit
harder for the beauty, but moving back
wasn’t as difficult as I thought. My spouse
and I were both prairie-born and lived
our early years under the shade of birch
leaves and trembling aspen. I moved back
because I wanted to cut firewood with my
dad and make pottery with my mum while
I still could. We moved back because we
craved time with family and the stability
of the familiar. I moved back with a part-
ner who cared for me in ways I had never
previously experienced.
Not one of us knows how many days we
have left or what tomorrow will look like,
so carpe diem. Today we are living a good
life — running a small bookstore and cafe
in the neighbourhood we love, in the land
that raised us, in the city that still has
potholes and abundant parking lots, sure,
a sad bright city with short summers and
long winters, a place where good things
still feel possible and the wide-open skies
never seem to end. ED.
This is a new series of essays by Edmontonians reflecting
on human connection. Pitch your little love story to
[email protected].
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