The decade came out the door like a freight train in full throttle. My husband and I were in Tyler, Texas, when he received a phone call from the Bush campaign asking if he would fly to Florida and help with the 2000 election re-count. That same day, P flew to Broward County, which proved to be precisely where the final battle for ballots boiled down.

Weeks later I joined him there, more on a mission to bring him back than count ballots. But as it turned out, on occasions I did observe the count. Often we’d exit the courthouse in the wee hours of the morning only to encounter more battle on the streets—both camps screaming and shaking fists at one another, their faces full of fury.

The rest is history, but later when I heard someone say he thought that "the process was good for the country,” I told him at least from my seat, “the only thing ‘good’ was that no one got shot!” I also came away thinking that machines, not people, are the better way to go. For a country considered “civilized,” it was not our finest hour. Little did I know, however, that for P and me, it was the first few minutes of what would become ours.

I couldn’t know that before the decade was over my husband would choose to engage in two more presidential campaigns. While he traveled the campaign trail with Rudy Giuliani, I struck quite a separate trail to East Texas, caring for my oldest brother. While it’s a story for a lot more space and words, I learned that schizophrenia can be as all consuming as any political campaign and similarly, affect not only families but ruin landscapes if you let it.

As far away and worlds apart as both our journeys were, when P and I reunited at the house something new felt attached to our hearts. Like a line of connection that penetrated the heart and made a beeline to the soul. Perhaps it was the combination of seeing the human condition up close and personal—whether it related to politics or a disease—that helped us return home, although depleted, appreciative and full of humility.

It took us time and a deeper love to eventually catch up with one another and resume our lives. For a time we were like anthropologists wearing magnifying glasses, sharing stories, mapping our journey both emotionally and spiritually, connecting the dots between history and the present. I realized I couldn’t have gone with P on the campaign trail any more than he could have traveled with me to East Texas. But having a partner who will help you unpack when you get home was huge. To then sort through the emotional stuff required more. Compassion. Tons of tolerance.

These last few years, I’ve often been reminded that great loss is almost always followed by light, some illumination. The brightest for me is similar in ways to a baseball term I’ve heard: “Keep your hands soft.” “Soft hands” means relaxing one’s fingers so they can close around the ball as it hits your hand or glove. In life, it seems to me, the work is keeping your heart soft, no matter how deep the hurt.

After this decade, who couldn’t use more of that?