I leaned back restlessly in the oversized lounge chair on the upper deck of our beach house in Hawaii, sighing heavily as I closed my eyes in attempt to escape my surroundings. But try though I might there was no escape. The sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline below, the warmth of the Hawaiian sunshine glowing on my face and the cool morning breeze that blew gently over my body reminded me that I was indeed in this place once more.

But I love it here, so escaping may not really be what I wanted in my heart to do.

I loved the way it made me feel to sit out on the deck and watch the sun rise on one side of the house in the mornings and set out over the ocean in the evenings. I loved all the sweet and beautiful memories that Hawaii brought back to me over and over, again and again, every single time I ventured to this place... and to that place in my mind.

But today the memories seemed more bitter than bittersweet.

I stared down at the paper in my lap and the pen in my shaking hand. There were so many words there that I didn't understand and that honestly, for the most part, I didn't care to try. All I needed to know was clear and would be clear to anyone who might happen upon those papers, etched forever in the form of two small lines at the bottom of a confusing novel of details... the details of our marriage brought down to the end. Two simple lines that we were to "sign below". And of course the glaring title at the top of the page... "Nikolas Gene Carter and Kathryn Grace Carter - Petition for Divorce in the state of Kentucky".

Yes, just that simple, "Sign here", as if doing so would really allow us to let everything go and be done with it. As if two signatures on a piece of paper could take away years of memories and what felt, to me at least, like a lifetime - incredible and meaningful - and make destroying it completely and utterly painless.

I stared at his signature there at the bottom of the paper and wondered if any of this was as painful for Nick as it was for me. If any of this meant as much, or hurt as much, or was killing him as much as it felt like it was killing me... because it definitely felt like it was killing me.

How had he so easily signed that paper when all I could do was sit there and stare at the blank line above my name and try my best not to fall apart even more. How had he so easily been willing to throw everything away?

Try though I may I couldn't help thinking back on the years of our lives together. About all of the fun we'd had and all of the love we'd shared and it made me wonder, silently and agonizingly, just how in the hell we'd gotten to this point in the first place. How even after everything we'd been through - the loss, the pain, the sickness, the suffering and most of all the overwhelming love, how we'd come to a point where we were both willing to forget all that and essentially say screw this to our marriage. Screw this, to us.

I closed my eyes again, thinking back on the past ten years of our lives, back to the beginning of our relationship when we were young and naive and stupidly, blissfully unaware. We wanted and were willing to spend every waking moment together, and we would have done just that at the time if it hadn't been for his touring and my education. But it brought us even closer together, that time apart. During those long months we he was gone and was stuck at school I would spend hours in my dorm room, between studying of course, writing in my journal about much I missed him and loved him and how I was so incredibly positive I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving only him.

I thought of that summer in Hawaii, the first of many... the love we'd shared, and the memories we'd made and that one glorious night when he proposed to me beneath the moonlit sky as the waves crashed at our feet and the air chilled our bodies and he'd carried me back to this very house where we'd made love together, creating a baby and solidifying our entire relationship in one small moment that surpassed any expectations I ever could have had.

And then there were of course the horrible memories of only a few days later... the experience in that hotel room, and the painful flight home after for all of us. The agonzing weeks that followed and led to more agonizing months... years. A cancer diagnosis. The loss of our child. Treatments... pain... a death sentence that I miraculously beat. For one brief moment in the mix of it all I remembered thinking there would be no way Nick would stay with me, but he'd proved me wrong time and time and time again.

And then, there was our marriage, on this very beach at this very spot, on this very day 8 years ago... when we vowed to love each other for better or worse, in sickness and health, til death do us part. And we'd thought of course at the time that the death part would happen within months, but those months by miracle turned to years and in those years we built a family...

So how now, after all of that could we really be considering throwing it all away?

The sound of my daughter's squeals of delight echoing from the beach below jolted me back to reality. I stood and walked to the edge of the balcony, glancing over the side as a genuine smile lit my face at the sight of my precious girl running barefoot along the sand, her father trailing quickly behind her. When he caught up to her he lifted her gently, tossing her in the air before setting her back down again and laughing as she took off at a run. They were returning together from their routine morning walk along the coast. Nick in his swimming trunks, our tiny Mia bean in her sundress and sunglasses, one of her daddy's baseball caps askew on her head. She stopped for a moment to pick up a shell and the hat fell from her head. I sighed at the way the sunlight bounced from her shinning black hair and bounced onto the smiling face of the proudest father in the world.

I remembered the days before Mia arrived, back when it was just the two of us. I remembered how we'd walk together along the beach and talk about how much we wished we could bring a child into the world together. How much we wanted to be parents and how unfair we felt it was that with everything we'd already been through, the dream of being parents was just one more thing we'd had yanked from beneath our feet.

And then Mia Elizabeth Carter entered our world... at 6 months of age weighing in at 10 lbs. 6 ounces, our little bundle of giggling happiness arrived and changed our lives. With Mia, two became three and it was no longer just Nick and Grace Carter, it was Mia's mommy and daddy and wherever we went, she was never far.

It seemed strange to even think about going back to two. I liked being Nick's wife and Mia's mommy. I like being a family.

I watched as Nick lifted Mia in the air once more, tossing her over his shoulder and tickling her toes as he pretended to dip the top of her head in the water. She squealed and laughed so hard that Nick could barely stop laughing himself, and I couldn't help but laugh along with them. I couldn't have asked for a better father for my daughter. Nick was nothing if not absolutely amazing with Mia and Mia adored her daddy. It's funny to think back on the times when having a child seemed an absolute impossibility, and then to the struggle we'd had with whether adoption was the right choice for us... with whether we'd be able to love an adopted child like our own. Now, here we were and here she was and it didn't matter at all how she'd arrived in our life there was no doubt she was 100 percent ours.

I sighed deeply as I watched the two of them continue up the beach in the other direction. I resumed my spot in the lounge chair and sighed as Kahlua, my incredibly loving Great Dane, stirred momentarily when I scratched his head before resuming his soft snoring from his spot beside me on the floor. I thought back to the day I received Kahlua from Nick. My 26th birthday, only months before our wedding and following one of my rougher chemotherapy treatments. Kahlua had quickly become my partner in crime and my constant companion through years of cancer treatments and now, as he lay there quietly dozing, his soft head resting on my feet, he seemed to know I needed him now more than ever.

I set the paper and pen on the table beside me, unsigned for the moment and leaned back in my chair. It could wait a little longer.

I wasn't ready yet.

I wondered if I ever would be.

Nick couldn't help but smile at the sight of his 2 1/2-year-old daughter dancing merrily along in the sand in front of him. This had become their routine over the past week; a morning walk during which he would follow along like an obedient puppy who'd go anywhere in the world his little girl's heart desired. And truth be told, he'd do just that.

He glanced up just in time to see her turn around and smile. Her smile took his breath away and made him smile in return. His heart felt happy each time he could see her happy. Nick never imagined it would possible to love another human being the way he loved his little girl. To love so much it hurt, he'd felt... but to love so much he'd gladly give his own life it it meant he knew she'd be happy forever... it was a totally surreal experience.

"Daddy!" Mia shouted in a voice that wasn't quite right and made Nick's heart skip a beat as he jogged to catch up to where she was stooping in the sand a few yards ahead of him.

"What is it bean?" he asked as he bent down, noticing for the first time that she was poking at something with her little plastic shovel, "Oh..." he saw immediately that it was a fish, obviously washed up during high tide, and obviously no longer alive.

"Put him back in 'da water daddy!" she pled as small tears glistened in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.

Nick looked at his daughter in disbelief. When exactly had she gone from being a baby to being a tiny person? How did she comprehend that the fish being out of the water was a bad thing, and could he not just go ahead and buy back her innocence now? Because he would if he could. He quickly took the shovel from her hand and scooped the fish back into the water where it was washed along the beach as the waves carried it silently back out into the depths of the ocean. A proper burial at least. And then he turned back to where Mia stood, sniffling as she looked at him expectantly.

"He be okay daddy?" She asked, concern evident in her tiny voice and Nick couldn't help but feel slightly ashamed when he lied and answered, "yes."

More because he knew it wasn't the first time he'd lied to his daughter, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. But then, part of parenthood is knowing that sometimes you have to lie to your children to protect them from the truth. He didn't want to be the kind of father though, whose lies affected his daughter so deeply that she resented him later in life and he silently wondered if years from now she would remember how he'd scooped the dead fish into the ocean and flung him back into the water and told her he'd be okay... when he knew it wasn't the truth.

He wondered this like he wondered if she would remember all the nights when he'd told her mommy would be okay, even though she cried so much Nick couldn't even convince himself she'd ever be okay again. He wondered if she would remember how mommy and daddy would get mad at each other and even though it was obvious they were mad, daddy would lie and tell her they were just playing a game when she asked, "Why yellin daddy?"

Nick cradled Mia in his arms, pulling her tightly to his chest as the two of them walked back towards the beach house together. He looked up towards the deck as they walked along, the sand buring his toes as afternoon approached and the morning sun grewer hotter in the sky. She was there... Grace... in that same spot she'd been in for days, Kahlua curled up beside her. He hated what their lives had become. He hated the thought that their marriage was falling apart.

For Nick, signing the papers had been by far the hardest thing he'd ever had to do... harder even than planning for her funeral when the doctors had been sure that her time was growing short. Signing those papers was like saying he no longer loved his wife, and that, he knew was the biggest lie of all.