Hey everyone, it's Anna. All right, today I want to bring back one of my favorite episodes. We recorded this almost a year ago and I still think about it all the time. Make sure you listen all the way to the end because we've got a very sweet update for you.

>> Love now and fall in love. I love >> love stronger than anything. >> For the love of love >> and I love you more than anything. There's still a lot of love.

[music] >> From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Each week, we bring you stories inspired by the Modern Love column. [music] We talk about love, lust, heartbreak, and all the messiness of relationships.

When Claire Corey was a young girl growing up on a farm in Montana, she dreamed about falling in love.

We lived in a single wide trailer. It was a little bit crowded, so I slept on the couch and I would often look out the window at the full moon and it's very beautiful and I would watch the moon sail across the sky. And me being the hopeless, romantic child that I was, I envisioned that somewhere out there under that same moon was the man for me.

[music] Just after she graduated college, Clare got engaged. But then right before the wedding, [music] her fianceé called it off.

After that, she spent years, decades [music] even, trying to make various relationships work. But none of them did. So eventually, she stopped worrying about it and decided to focus on her career. After her 50th birthday, she looked back on her life and felt happy.

You know, you think, "Wow, I've come a long way in life and I still have a long way to go."

>> [music] That feeling led Clare to write into the modern love column, saying she'd finally fallen in love, but not with some guy. [music] Instead, it was a love for life itself. She thought maybe her love story was over. But then the most improbable, bizarre series of events occurred. Some of those bizarre events were scary. Her health took a dramatic turn. But some [music] were beautiful beyond anything she could have ever imagined. [music] Today, we tell you the rest of Claire's love story. Stick with [music] us.

>> [music] Claire Corey, welcome to Modern Love.

Thank you so much and I really appreciate this opportunity.

So Claire, we're here to talk about your love story. There are twists, there are turns, things do not go as you expect. But I want to start at the beginning. When you were a kid growing up, you dreamed about falling in love. Paint a picture of that for me.

>> Yeah. So, um I'm the oldest of seven children and um we grew up on a little farm in Montana. So, I remember a lot of thoughts of romance rolling through my brain in those early years. And um my sister and I, we were out on our our fake horses, you know, and that we had made out of sticks, our stick horses basically,

>> of course. And so we both had husbands along for the ride. And uh um mine was Jim and hers was Steve. And so I just imagined that one day, you know, I was going to be riding around in a truck with Jim and we were going to have a happily ever after. [laughter]

I mean, I I I know that years later when you were in your 20s, you did have a brief engagement to a man. His name was not Jim. His name was Roger. But that engagement didn't work out. Tell me, what did you love about Roger?

Oh, Roger was just a ton of fun. He was always laughing and he was always up for adventure. Um, he was very funny and we were in very different fields. He's in engineering and I was in psychology, but we supported one another through grad school. And so, um, you know, I thought I felt like we were really good together. We were really solid. You know, I I believe that we would grow old together.

>> Where did that certainty come from?

>> Good question, because apparently I was wrong. [laughter] Um, so our wedding was scheduled in May and we had spent a lot of time um preparing for that. And so we had everything lined up and at the end of March, Roger woke up in the middle of the night and he said, "I can't do this." I said, 'What do you mean you can't do what?' And he said, 'Well, you know, I I can't get married. I can't go through with this wedding. And that began a whole lot of uh shall we say uh painful discussions about why. And I never got a really good answer as to why um until a year later when we actually met in a park because [snorts] I was going to um I was going to sell the dress. I I I actually ended up giving it to somebody, but we met in a park and I said, "Do you want to see the dress?" You know, and so I pulled the dress out and um and he said, "Oh my gosh." He said, "It's so beautiful." And he said, "Do you know what we were missing?" And I was like, "No." And he said, "We were missing the magic. We didn't have the magic."

Did you know what he meant when he said we were missing the magic? Did that track for you?

>> It it did. I um to some degree, yes. I mean, to some degree, I was still trying to understand what had gone wrong. But yeah, I I did um because [laughter] in between that time, I actually had met Don.

>> Okay. Who's Don? Who's he?

>> So, I went to a training and the trainer was a man named Don. And so I remember I'm a shy person, but I did approach him at the training to ask him a question about something and we had a brief little conversation and I I didn't think much of it, but I thought, "Well, wow, that's a really cool guy." But um I think it was the training was a couple days and so when the training ended, I remember he said something to me and and he said, "Hey, do you want to um get together for dinner sometime?" And we had a lot in common. We work in similar fields. We just had a very deep connection. And I've often said to people that it was the best days of my life.

>> And what were you thinking as that was happening? Did you feel like those were the best days?

What I thought to myself was, "Oh, now I understand. This is why the relationship with Roger didn't work out because actually the real person for me, the real the man who really was the one for me was still out there. and I just hadn't met him yet. And so that's how that uh romance began, which was a wonderful romance, but was also a brief romance.

>> Can you tell me why it ended? Why did you guys stop being in contact or seeing each other?

>> It was complicated by a lot of things. you know, he was traveling a lot and I had my job and um so it it ended basically but you know by lack of communication and um letters you know again this is in the days before email and cell phones and that kind of thing. So I remember writing him a letter and saying how hurt that I was and um I then was very depressed. [laughter]

Did you try to get back out there dating wise at this time or was that not at all a priority?

>> No, it was not. I was way too brokenhearted um

>> to even think about that. And you know, here I thought that I had found the answer to the whole reason why my relationship with Roger hadn't worked out. And now I really had found a relationship that was magical. And then it ended and I really felt like how could this happen to me twice? These two heartbreaks relatively close to each other almost back to back in the in the grand scheme.

Did you feel your heart harden? Were you like that's it. I'm I'm not doing this anymore. It's not worth it.

I would say at that time no I was not ready to be done. It took probably another decade or so, you know, and in the intervening years, you know, I did have some men in my life who were truly good men and but the relationships didn't last. I would say maybe by the time I was in my mid4s and I really started asking myself,

>> what are you trying to do here? you know, um, looking back, I can see that my life shifted tracks at that time

>> from a future that was about creating marriage and a family and a home to my being more of a career person, focused on my career and not so much a relationship. Hm.

>> What were some of the things you were telling yourself that made you okay with this new version of your future? This version where you wouldn't find someone. How did it become all right?

>> Well, because I had to ask myself,

>> what are you missing in your life? You're, you know, I have a lot of good things in my life and my life is going along very well. And yeah, I sort of had this empty spot in my heart or this empty place in my heart where I felt like a relationship would fill it up, but I thought, is something really missing in your life?

>> And as I started looking around, I thought, I'm very content with where I am and and who I am. And no, there's really nothing missing at all. And it felt like I had been beating my head against a wall for years trying to figure out how to make this relationship thing happen. And at some point you think, wait a minute, why are you beating your head all the time? You know, is this really worth it? And what are you missing when you're not beating your head? And well, you're missing living. You're missing life itself.

>> Did Did you ever feel lonely, though?

>> No. [clears throat] Really? Really? Yeah, I've never felt lonely. And maybe that's because I have a lot of siblings and and friends and things. No, I did not feel lonely. Did I miss having a romantic partner in my life? Yes.

>> Huh.

>> You know, and I just want to, you know, be clear that this was not an easy process. [snorts] Everything I let go of has claw marks all over it. So, um, I can say that, um, this was this idea of a fulfilling romantic relationship had claw [laughter] marks all over it. It was clawed to pieces um before I could let go of it. Yeah. [laughter] So yeah.

>> And when you did let this claw marked thing go, was it liberating?

>> Yeah. Absolutely. And I realized that there is a freedom in that and that um I I did feel liberated and because I'm like, hey, I don't need to be looking for anybody. And and but it was hard to put hope back in the basket and shut the basket. hope, hope of having a romance, hope of having um that fulfilling relationship that I'd always dreamed of. And I just stuffed it in the basket, shut the lid, and but every now [laughter] and again, you know, hope it just keeps coming and it would uh, you know, stick its head out of the basket and be waving at me. I'm like, "Get back in there. Shut that thing." when you hit this kind of coming to terms with being single for the rest of your life, kind of putting hope in the basket for the rest of your life, this hope for a romantic partner, you know, did you take a look back on your life at this at that point and and assess it? And if so, what did you see?

>> Well, I remember the year that I turned 50 was also the first time I ever traveled to Europe. And um my brother and his wife were living in Germany and my mom and I went to Europe. And that was [clears throat] a a dream that I'd always had. And I remember thinking that, you know, my life was very full.

>> Things were good. And I was looking forward to a future that, you know, that seemed wide open with possibility. You know, not the possibility necessarily cuz again, hope is, you know, stay in the basket hope. All right. And um but a future of you know continuing to work and you know someday I was going to you know retire and what was I going to do then and you know I had goals for myself pay off my house you know those kinds of things.

>> 50 was a beautiful time >> and then just after you turned 52 >> you found out you have a rare type of breast cancer.

>> Yes.

What was that moment like for you?

>> Um, well, it changes your life forever. There's no doubt about it. Um, it's the most aggressive form of breast cancer. It's called inflammatory breast cancer. And so, I knew then that my life was contracting. And what happened was my life went from looking a decade or more ahead to looking a day at a time. [music]

>> [music] Claire, when [music] you got this diagnosis, what did that change for you?

>> You know, it's really interesting because I learned a lot about myself. You really don't know how you'll react until those situations happened. So, I said a couple things to myself. Well, I'm just going to keep working until I can't anymore, and I'm going to keep exercising until I can't anymore, and I'll just keep doing and what I'm doing until I can't anymore. So, [snorts] you know, um they scheduled chemo in such a way that um your down days would be on the weekend. So, I was able to continue working and uh I'd go to chemo and go to work and then, you know, come down on the weekend and get by Sunday afternoon, I was coming back up.

I mean, you're saying all of this like it's just a routine, you know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but there had to be hard parts of this.

>> Oh, yeah. There are hard parts of it. Um, inflammatory breast cancer is a beast. It's a challenge. And I will say this, inflammatory breast cancer, um, your breast enlarges. Um, the cancer turns the breast purple. It was hard as a rock. Um, I could feel it turning hard. It's ugly and you have to walk around with it every single day. And so you start to realize that today is all that you've got. And if today is all that I've got, then I damn well better make this a good day [snorts] because I'm not giving up what I got right now. And so what happened is that I realized that I have fallen in love with life itself.

And I remember the day that I found out that I had progressed to stage four. I came home and I opened the door to my house and I looked around at all my possessions and I thought, "Wow, somebody's going to have to come [clears throat] in and give all of these things away." And so, um, I started to look around at all the things that I was going to miss. And I thought, "Wow, I'm really going to miss that sunrise. I'm going to miss that sunset. going to miss my colleagues at work. I'm going to miss my nieces and nephews growing up. That's still real hard one for me.

I'm going to miss just these everyday moments of where you're, you know, taking a walk and there's a beautiful flower, you run into somebody, just so many things like that. I had a friend who was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and she's passed away now. But she said to me, "If I could turn back time and change this, I wouldn't." [clears throat] She said, "It's given me too much." And I'm crying and crying and saying, "How can you say that? I'm sure I'll never feel that way. But if I could turn back time, I wouldn't change it. It's given me too much. It's given me an appreciation for life. you know, I got out of the hospital in in uh September and for various reasons, they hadn't let me take a shower and uh oh my god, I came home, I jumped in the shower, I was able to get in my car and drive my car to work.

>> Mhm.

>> And I thought, "This is one of the best days of my life, [laughter] you know, and I'm commute."

>> Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. And so I it's not like I don't get frustrated or upset or sad about things because I do. But I've become more at peace with knowing that my life will end. But that also gives me the freedom to know how much I love this life and how much I love being alive and I'm willing to fight for it with all I got. Um because I just I love it so much.

>> [music] When we come back, Claire's life takes a totally unexpected turn towards romance. [music] Stay with us. [music]

>> [music] Claire, all through your 30s and 40s, you were hoping you'd fall in love. And then in your 50s, you're facing terminal cancer. And it sounds like you did find love, just not how you expected. You found this love for life. And I feel like I can see the headline now. It's like woman falls in love with life which would be a beautiful end to your story except it's not the end to your story right

>> yes that is correct so my heart was completely full I want to say that >> because I have found a love for life but at the most unexpected time in my life when I don't feel good about my body and I cannot imagine that anybody is going to find me attractive is certainly as a romantic partner Suddenly and very unexpectedly, I did find romance again. And it happened to be Don. It happened to be a guy we've heard about before. Don, [laughter]

>> remind us who Don is to you.

>> So, Don was a person that I had a relationship with 27 years ago [laughter] >> and I was completely heartbroken when it ended, but I had gone on and, you know, made my peace with that. Yeah.

>> And yeah, and you know, I'm a kind of person who, you know, always stays friends with people and so we work in similar fields and we were in one another's orbit, but we didn't talk very much. Maybe a couple times a year. I do remember I called him when I found out that I had cancer and let him know.

>> So, when did Don come back into the picture? Like, how long after your diagnosis? Also, I just want to note for the listeners out there that every time I say his name, you smile in this beautiful way that lights you up and it's lighting me up, too. How long after your diagnosis did he reenter your life?

Well, it was one year ago and by this time I'm well into a stage 4 situation, uh, stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. And so, that's not exactly the kind of thing you put on your dating profile. [laughter]

You know, a little tough. Yeah. You know what had happened was he was going to be in Phoenix for a a conference. >> He said, "Oh, well, gez, we ought to get together for dinner. You know, I haven't seen him for a long time." And so, um, we did. We had a nice little dinner, whatever. And when [snorts] I said goodbye to him, I honestly thought to myself, I'll probably never see him again. I think that this is it. But then this really weird thing happened. And [laughter] it was kind of a little bit embarrassing, but um so my employer was having the employee Christmas party

>> and I have gone alone to every single employee event for years. And so I thought, you know what, I want to go with somebody that I would enjoy going with. And I'm just I would like to just go once to the employee Christmas party with somebody. And I remember I was driving to work and it popped into my head to ask him to go with me. And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." Cuz he doesn't even live in the same state. [snorts] And um but it just kept bugging me and bugging me. And so I have to say that I felt like a high school girl, you know, at the Satie Hawkins dance or whatever, you know, when you call and you ask the guy to go with you. And so I called him up and I said, you know, um, you know, I've always wanted to go to the Christmas party with somebody and [snorts] would you go with me, you know, and you know, it's in a few weeks. And and he said, "Yeah, sure." [laughter] And we had this great time.

>> Was it everything you'd hoped for? [laughter]

>> I like a lot of glitter and sparkle. And you get a lot of that on Christmas, you know. and and our employee Christmas party was held at this really lovely hotel and it was full of all the lights and all the sparkle and I just I don't know I I'm just

>> I'm just a fan of that kind of thing. And so, um, it was just really fun to go with him and to be in this beautiful place and, you know, to have this experience. And the the next day we met up for breakfast and um, so he starts saying to me, you know, he's been having he's older than I am and he'd been having a few health issues of his own. He said, you know, I think I'm going to be moving. And I said, oh. And he mentioned a few possible places and Arizona was one of them. And I said, "Well, why would you want to go anywhere else?" I was kind of joking with him, you know. Well, about a month, 6 weeks later, I hear, "Well, I'm going to move to Arizona." [laughter]

So, how did you react when you got that news? That's kind of like great news.

Yeah, I was Well, I was shocked. I was completely shocked because I wasn't sure he was really serious, you know. I said, "Well, look, I'll uh I'll I'll help you look for a place and you know, I'm I'm here for you, you know." And so, he rented a house and he wasn't here yet. And [snorts] uh he said, "Look, could you go pick up the keys for me?" And I said, "Oh, yeah. I'll do that." And then I got this idea and I said, "You know what? I should get him a few things for when he gets here so that sweet [laughter]

>> so that you know you know when you move in and and you don't have anything you know right

>> Claire you got a lot going on you got have a lot going on you have your full-time job you have your treatment you have your own health

>> it means something that you saw this empty house and you were like you know what amidst my full schedule I think I'm going to go out and buy him a blender or whatever you got him [laughter] you know

well it it was kind of like that and my cousin has said to me sense. Oh yeah, you know, um going to fix up a guy's house before he moves in. Yeah, you think that's just platonic, right? But it did come to pass that I was putting up a shower curtain in his vacant bathroom on Valentine's Day.

>> No. [laughter]

>> And he wasn't in town and I said to myself, "How crazy is this?" And uh so but that is exactly what happened.

It's clear you and Don are reconnecting in a friendship way. When did you start when did it start to become romantic? Was there a time you can point to where you were like, "Oh, there's more here than just two old friends, you know, coming back into each other's lives."

Well, ironically, it was about a week or two after my story was published, which is, you know, about being single, but we got this idea to go to this um it's called the butterfly wonderland, I think is what it's called. But we went and it is actually it's just such a lovely place and there's just butterflies everywhere and it's beautiful. There's flowers and greenery. It's a very lush sort of place compared to everywhere else in Arizona. And um I felt felt this energy start to shift and I'm like saying to myself, what is happening here? What is going on? There is something happening and I

>> now I felt like there was a door starting to open and I wasn't going to be able to shut it. [laughter] And perhaps the old me would have said, "I'm not walking through that because of all the complications and the messiness of it." Cuz it was going to be messy. Truthfully, we're both in the probably the final seasons of our life because he is older than I am and of course I have stage four cancer and so the door opened and I felt like I had to walk through it.

When you say you felt the energy shift, like there was a door opening, did you have what we call a kind of like define the relationship conversation? Did you turn to him on that bench and say, "Clearly something's happening. We should talk about it."

Well, I wish I could say I was that mature. [laughter] But apparently I'm not.

>> Yeah. And no, I I'm still in high school. But so we didn't have a conversation on the penchet, but I felt it and I knew it. But later um within a day or two, we did. And I said, "Well, let's just see, you know, um if this if we can make it 90 days." So he keeps joking with me that we keep that, okay, 90 more days and 90 more days. I said, "Well, what if we're not speaking to each other in 90 days?"

>> [laughter]

>> So I said, "Well, let's just give it a go and see what happens, you know."

>> Mhm. Yeah, we do.

>> Is he cooking for you? Cuz you

>> Yeah. And I I'm kind of ashamed to say that I've never cooked for him once. And but no, he's been cooking a lot. Yeah.

>> What does Don What does Don make you?

>> Oh, um I love his sloppy joe's.

>> Yum.

>> And And then kilbasa and sauerkraut. I can't help Polish, you know. So yeah, so those are my two favorites that he makes. But um >> and then he makes me breakfast and peeling oranges for me and things like that.

>> I I can't explain it. I I don't know how this happened. [music]

[music] Right after we got back together in June, I already had an existing appointment to go to to go to the mortuary and make my funeral arrangements.

>> Oh my gosh.

>> And so we had barely gotten back together. And I said, "Well, I've got an appointment in the mortuary. [laughter] Do you want to come with me?"

>> Mortuary dates.

>> Yeah. So pretty much our first quote date was going to the mortuary. Te

>> tell me that he also took you to like dinner or something. It wasn't just mortuary dates. Like tell me that you also went to like a nice Italian restaurant.

>> Oh yeah. Well, we've you know in fact yes we've [laughter] had but my sisters are like only you. That's just the way that you would roll. Yeah.

>> I mean I'm thinking about how >> you know you this was an appointment that you had on the books. like you had made this appointment when you were single and handling this stuff yourself. And the thing I really >> look up to is it's you're kind of telling him like this is my life. I was already doing these things. You are welcome to come along for the ride basically. And the thing that I find remarkable from his end is he's like yeah I'm there.

>> Mhm. And that's one of the things that we had about six good weeks [laughter] of of things being relatively normal and then it all crashed and um I got really sick with the flu and then next thing I was in the hospital and the cancers progressed and I'm looking really bad on paper and uh he was staying in the hospital with me and sleeping in a chair and that bothered me. I'm like, "No, I don't want you sleeping in a chair." But my sister came from out of town and then I said to him, "Go home and sleep in your own bed for one night." Because by now he'd been at the hospital with me for probably four or five nights. So he went home and that was the day that the results of my brain MRI came back. And

>> my sister um we were out walking in the garden at the hospital and she said, "Uh, your MRI came back." and I saw from the look on her face and she said, "Yeah, you've got a lesion in your brain." And that was the last thing that I wanted to hear. I felt like I could deal with anything but brain metastasis.

>> And I said, "Well, what does Dawn say?" Cuz I kind of figured she had told him already. And um we were standing and looking out the window. I remember the elevator door opened and and there he was like he came back. [music]

[music] You did so much work in the sort of middle part of your life to move on from your desire to have a romantic partner. And now you have that, you have Don, you have a romantic partner. I just want to know like what does it feel like to to open back up that possibility and to let it be fulfilled? What does that feel like?

Well, on the one hand, it's kind of scary because you're opening your heart again, but I also think that um you know, it's not worth it to walk around with a closed heart.

It's it's hard to overstate the importance of that feeling of safety and belonging that I think that we all look for and that I'd probably been looking for for for so much of my life. And to find that um it it it's a little bit of a [sighs] you know like you're swirling around in a merry ground going what just happened here? It's hard to get your head around too. My life is very different than it was 8 months ago, a year ago. It's very different cuz it's a whole different way of than [snorts] I've been used to living. And we're not living together but we spend a heck of a lot of time together. And I honestly thought we had this joke that I would be um smothered if he was around too much. And so he kept asking me, you know, do you need some alone time? Do you need some alone time? So much to my utter shock and surprise, I have found that I really I'm okay with, you know, him being here, you know, or me being at his place or whatever. I got to tell you, I'm a little surprised at how much I've enjoyed it. [laughter]

The other night I said, "Well, I just would have come home and forgotten to eat." eating and he's like, "No, no, we have to make dinner.

>> I'm making you sloppy joe's and you are eating them." [snorts] >> Yeah. Um but it's just been um a real joy, I think, to share with somebody uh the ups and downs and just to share in life with somebody. It's it's way more fun than I actually thought.

You know, a big part of for most couples, a big part of starting a relationship or being in the early stages of relationship like you and Don are [snorts] is talking about the future, >> right? >> And all the time that you're going to spend with them.

>> Mhm. [snorts]

What about you and Don? Do you talk about the future?

Um, you know, right now I'm responding to treatment and things are going well. that can change very quickly. I'm very aware of that. I hope it doesn't, but it could. And certainly, you know, he's not a young person and and his own health could change very quickly. The truth is that we don't know what kind of future we have, if any. And so, I find that I'm not very troubled about who's taking out the trash kind of thing. It's not like we're building a relationship to last through decades because we're not likely to have decades. And so really it's about today.

>> Was there a recent moment where the two of you were together and you thought like, "Oh, this is this is the magic." Like this is this is what it is.

>> Yeah. Well, I'd say there's quite a lot of those moments, you know, and maybe they're not the ones that you'd expect, you know, but, you know, we've seen some beautiful sunsets together and uh watch the moonrise uh which was just beautiful. um watching a full moon rise and then uh you know I think about like I want to have more time for more conversations and more time to do this and it's nice [clears throat] to do I guess what I call sort of normal couples things together. Yeah, it's just a very new experience for me. Yeah. [clears throat]

I I I'm going to assume that when you were first diagnosed and you started thinking about your own death that looked a certain way to you and then you meet Don >> and over the past few months as things have grown and deepened as much as they have that picture of your passing must look a little different and I want to know like has it changed for you and if so

Well, you know, I consider myself realistically optimistic and so I'm optimistic and I will take every single treatment that they offer me. I will do everything. But I'm also realistic and so I know that the day may come when I there are no more treatments available and that I will have to gracefully I hope I can gracefully accept that at that time. and I've said I hope the gods will be kind to me as I leave this world. I also feel that I don't want to let anybody down. Um my family in particular and now Don frankly by dying, you know, and I feel like, oh jeez, I'm going to put them through a lot. And so I do talk to him about it and he says, "I'm I'm in it with you and I'm I'll I'll be there regardless."

>> One of the things that I've said to myself since I was first diagnosed with cancer literally the first week, well, there's millions of other women who have been faced with breast cancer, and if they got through it, I can do it, too. There's millions of other women who have had chemo. If they got through it, I can do it, too. or surgeries, radiation. There are, you know, many women living with stage 4 metastic breast cancer. If they're doing it, I can do it, too. And what's also true is that there are many, many women who have died from stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. And if they did it, well, I can do it, too. And I just hope that I can do it um gracefully. And um and I hope that um well, jeez, I really hope that I won't disappoint anybody and let anybody down because I really do want to keep living.

Claire, I I do think it speaks to the kind of person you are that when we're talking about your own mortality, the first thing that comes to mind for you is other people. It's the people that you love. And I just want to say I think Don is very lucky to count himself in that group of people who you love. You know, when you wrote in to modern love, it was actually before you and Don had reconnected.

And I I think it might have a different feeling now that we know what happened after you wrote it. So I I wonder if you could read it for us.

>> I will happily read it. Yeah. Yeah. Who knew what was coming after this? [laughter]

[music] Finally finding the magic.

Since [music] childhood, I yearned for love.

Once I came within weeks of marriage before it abruptly fell apart. [music] He said we were missing the magic and admittedly he was right.

A few men came and went.

I'm now 59 with stage [music] 4 metastatic breast cancer. I still don't have a partner, but I've fallen desperately in love with life.

Exquisite beauty emerges everywhere.

[music] My cat on my lap. A cashier extending an unexpected smile. Sunlight skipping [music] across a lake. I use each day to soak up the world's splendor. Not yet, I whisper to the heavens. I love it here.

Oh, that that there's such a new depth to it after our conversation. I mean, it's just remarkable. There's so much. I understand the context and the history and also the chapter that comes after it which you did not know when this was published. It's just remarkable.

>> Yes,

>> Claire Corey, thank you so much for this conversation. [music] I'm I'm really really grateful.

>> Well, I am as well. It's a delight to speak with you.

All >> [music] right, here's that update I was promising. It's been about a year since we released this episode, [music] so we reached out to Claire to see how she's doing. Despite everything, she is still working [music] full-time and still in love with life. And here's the big news. [music] She and Don got hitched. Claire says she never thought she would get married, [music] but that life is full of surprises. and she says, quote, "Dawn is the home of my heart." [music]

The Modern Love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Joseph, Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Emily Lang, Jen Poant, [music] Lynn Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis. This episode was produced by Amy Pearl, [music] and Davis Land. It was edited by Jen Poant. Original music in this episode [music] by Pat McCusker, Rowan Nemisto, Marian Lozano, and Dan Powell. Dan also composed our theme music. Our mix engineer [music] is Daniel Ramirez and we had studio support from Mattie Mosiello and Nick Pitman. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, [music] we've always got those instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.