THREE DAYS before the one-year anniversary of Sam’s death, I print off a fatter version of my ugly baby and take the meandering mess of a manuscript with me to the ceremony at Sam’s church where I meet up with Jodie.

“I know it’s wretched,” I say, handing it to her, “but I also know you’re the one person on the planet who will still encourage me.”

“Ya gotta start somewhere,” she says and gives me a big hug. “I’m really sorry I can’t go to New York with you now. We just don’t feel it would be wise.”

I nod. “I totally understand.”

“Adri?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversation we had on September 11th.”

“And?”

She clears her throat. “And, umm…well, I don’t mean to be rude, but I wonder if watching that tragedy unfold on TV was a sort of post-traumatic…trigger for you? Maybe seeing all those horrific images brought your own hurt to the surface again?”

I nod my head slowly. “That actually makes a lot of sense.”

She looks at the ground a moment, upset, then back at me. “Especially since there were so many police officers, firefighters and other first responders killed.”

ON SEPTEMBER 30th, Sam’s family, Ed and I have front row seats at the national memorial service for fallen officers at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. I’ve tried to mentally prepare myself for today. Tom will be carrying a police hat, representing Sam, on a pillow. There will be thousands of officers from across North America. The media will be filming family members of officers who have passed away in the line of duty during the past year. There will be speeches. There always are.

What I’ve forgotten to factor in, however, is that although I’ve survived a year of widowhood, I am nowhere near healed. It isn’t pride, respect and honour I feel as the pipe band marches by; it’s anger. Boom, boom, boom goes the drum and I’m back at Sam’s funeral watching the pallbearers climb the church steps, struggling beneath the weight of his casket. Who did take more than a fucking date square from his funeral? Has any positive change come from his death? Are workplaces any safer?

Or is it me who is now carrying Sam’s casket?

Boom. I open my eyes and see Tom, holding the pillow and hat, fighting back tears. I feel so guilty for wanting a relationship with him, but God knows I’ve tried to love a soul or a spirit or a memory or a light or whatever it is that Sam has become, instead of a husband.

Boom. I am in the future. Who will be sitting in my seat next year?

The speeches reflect the usual rhetoric: God’s plan, greener pastures, fallen heroes and societal gratitude. Cause and effect, anyone?

Then the bagpipes play “Amazing Grace.” I hang my head and cry; can a wretch like me be saved?

AFTER THE ceremony, Ed and I go to the cemetery where our grandma—our mom’s mom—is buried.

“I wouldn’t want to be you,” Ed says as I place pink carnations on her headstone.

“Thanks a lot.”

“It’s just that I know how much you loved Sam,” he explains, “so I can’t fathom what this last year has been like for you.”

“It’s been the shits. And not a goddamn thing has changed either.”

“What did you expect to change?”

I shrug. “I dunno.”

“Gandhi said you must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

“And what about everyone else?”

“Most people won’t change unless they absolutely have to,” he says, “and that’s usually not until the eleventh hour.”

I sit down on the grass. “Ed, do you believe in fate?”

He thinks a moment. “I believe destiny is waiting for you at the corner store—but if you don’t leave your house to go buy that carton of milk, you won’t meet it.”

I smile. “I guess that answers my question about going to New York tomorrow.”

“Why wouldn’t you go?”

“Because I’m scared shitless.”

“At this point,” he says. “Manhattan is probably the safest place on earth.”

“But it sucks having to go alone.”

“It also takes courage.” He nods toward my grandma’s headstone. “Luckily, you come from a long line of strong women.”

At the age of 32, my grandmother left England for Canada with plans to marry a Saskatchewan farmer. But on the ship journey over, she fell in love with my grandfather, an engineer and army major from Ottawa. They married within the week and their daughter, my mother the lioness, arrived shortly thereafter with a birth weight of 3 pounds, 6 ounces. In 1925, it was a miracle she survived but a testament to her inner strength.

“What if I don’t have a baby?” I blurt. “Will that line end with me?”

Ed frowns. “Do you even want a child?”

“I dunno.”

“Then you better do some serious soul-searching to find out.”

“I think I’m in love with Tom.”

He smiles. “That’s certainly plausible.”

“He’s not in love with me, though.”

“Tom can’t be, Adri…at least not at this point. For lots of reasons.”

I pick a dandelion, nodding.

“And besides, he already has kids, doesn’t he?” Ed asks.

“Yeah,” I reply. “So?”

“So…as much as you don’t want to be alone, I strongly suggest you make wise use of this time. You need to figure out what you really want out of life and then slowly start working toward that. There are no shortcuts.”

“That’s not the answer I wanted to hear,” I say.

“Then you shouldn’t have asked the question.”

I throw the dandelion at his head.

With a laugh, he catches it. “Better than a cookie.”

We walk together back to his car. He opens the rear door on the driver’s side, pulls out my knapsack and hands it to me. “You forgot this at the memorial service.”

“YOU’RE GOING to the war-torn streets of Manhattan,” the US customs officer says to me the next day, “for a holiday?”

“Yeah. I planned this trip before the World Trade Center, er…fell.”

“That was only three weeks ago,” he says.

“I realize that.”

After scrutinizing my passport, he hands it back. “Well, have a good trip.”

First stop is Yankee Stadium where dozens of police officers stand guard outside the building. Inside, I buy my Yankees ball cap, a hot dog and a beer then walk up the ramp to watch a ball game in a near-empty stadium.

After a mammoth American breakfast the next morning, I walk from my hotel on Broadway all the way to the financial district. Past the jazz bars of Greenwich Village I stroll but there are no crowds of cheerful patrons singing. Nor do I see steam rising from manhole covers. The remains at Ground Zero, however, are still smoldering.

I stop in front of a flower-laden shrine to fallen police officers and firefighters and bow my head. I say a prayer for the dead as well as a fanciful wish for the loved ones left behind: may their year ahead be less horrific than the past one has been for me.

Walking toward Battery Park, I see a group of marines armed with machine guns, standing at a checkpoint. One of them stares out across the water. I turn my head to follow his gaze and there, through the barbed-wire fence, I see the real Statue of Liberty for the first time.

“There she is,” I whisper.

I close my eyes and I’m on the bridge again with Sam in the Venice of Vegas. I see the gondolier, in his cheerful red scarf, gently paddling his gondola through the canal as beautiful Italian music fills the air. I smell Sam’s cologne, now mixed with the scent of smoke and flowers, and feel the soft weight of his hand on my shoulder as we stand together, looking out over the…

“Ma’am?”

I open my eyes and turn around. The marine who had been staring at the Statue of Liberty is now standing behind me. The Empire State Building looms in the background. His hand drops to his side. “Are you all right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to head back the way you came,” he says, “because this is a restricted area.”

I begin the long walk back to my hotel, past the thousands of missing persons’ photographs flapping on telephone poles.

THE FOLLOWING afternoon, I’m sitting on a park bench in Central Park, watching the ducks in the lagoon, when a teenager sits down beside me and asks how I’m doing.

“Not bad, thanks.”

“That was quite something, huh?” he says. “About those towers?”

I nod. “No kidding. I…”

“A group of us have come from Texas to see if we could help.” He shifts so he’s facing me. “Have you let Jesus into your heart?”

I stare at the ducks. “That’s an interesting question.”

“We’re here to spread the word of God,” he says, patting his bible.

I turn to him. “I see. And what is that, exactly?”

He holds up the Bible. “This is the word of God.”

“No,” I say, “that’s a book. What’s the word of God?”

“Ma’am, are you a Christian?”

I throw back my head and laugh. “I’d have to go with no.”

He pats his bible again. “This is the truth. This is the word of God.”

“You still haven’t told me what that word is.”

The teen turns and stares at the ducks for a few minutes. “Love,” he says finally.

I smile. “Bingo.”

Clearly unimpressed with me, he wanders off. I head over to the Bronx Zoo and am standing in front of the bear enclosure, watching an old timer snoozing in the sun, when an older woman comes up to me.

“He’s not too worried about world events,” she says.

“No kidding.”

The woman, a zoo volunteer, proceeds to enthusiastically tell me about the bear’s history, personality and daily habits. I’m inspired by her commitment. This is her tiny corner of the world and despite all that’s happened she still takes her job seriously.

Then I go to the New York Public Library bookstore and buy The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. I sit on the front steps and am flipping through the book when a sentence catches my eye. It is about how organisms don’t struggle because they must evolve but rather how they evolve because they must struggle. Clunk. Because of my struggles this past year, I am evolving. I feel a faint stirring inside, as if that part of myself that fell alongside Sam is finally trying to get back up again.

I head over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I find myself almost running from one exhibit to the next…from Greece to China, Mesopotamia to Peru. Then I hit the Natural History Museum and look for Lucy—the 3.5-million-year-old hominid I’d read about in university. When I find the exhibit, I wave at her through the glass. At long last science is blooming again in the garden of my mind—alongside a few persistent religious weeds.

At the space exhibit at the other end of the museum, where I’d heard complimentary snacks were being offered, I down a glass of wine and a few meatballs then catch the IMAX show, narrated by Tom Hanks. Inside the empty theatre, I gaze up at the replica night sky.

“We are in the universe,” says Tom, “and the universe is in us.”

I scan the sky for Orion’s Belt and when I spot the three stars in a row, I smile.

In the gift store on the way out of the museum, I buy a pink dragonfly necklace and matching earrings to symbolize the year of transformation I’ve made it through.

My final evening in New York is spent at a sold-out performance of La Boheme at the Met.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

I turn to my right and see a guy about my age sitting where Jodie—or Sam in an ideal world or Tom in a next-to-ideal one—should be.

I smile. “Yeah it is.”