I was saddened to read an article in yesterday’s newspaper about the plight of Ecuador, which, it is being reported, has lately become an unwelcome haven for violent criminal drug gangs. I visited the country several years back, on a scouting mission for an over-winter destination for me and Lee after her retirement.

At the time I traveled to Ecuador, we were completing major renovations to our city home.  Lee opted to stay behind to work with the architect, contractor and crew  but strongly encouraged me to make the trip since I would be traveling there with our friends Craig and Donna, who happened to be heading to Ecuador to fetch Donna’s mom. Donna explained that her mother was completing a stay with Donna’s brother, a pilot for a major United States airline, who worked out of Miami while living like a king with his wife and kids in Ecuador’s capital city of Quito.  After enjoying several days in Quito with the family, I departed alone to investigate other regions of the country of particular interest to me.

I returned home convinced Ecuador checked our boxes as a candidate for an extended winter getaway destination. I was particularly taken with the charming and important colonial city of Cuenca, a United Nations Heritage City, which is situated in a  valley surrounded by mountains. I liked its history as well as its young vibe, courtesy of being home to one of Ecuador’s finest universities. A lovely river runs through the town, past the university, all the way to the downtown district. There, one finds a smattering of modern structures sprinkled among numerous older buildings in the Spanish Colonial style: architecture that features white stucco walls, soft arches, clay terra-cotta tiled roofs, large, carved wooden doors.

I spoke to Lee every day, providing her with on-the-spot impressions of the country.  Later, back home, I would subject her to periodic slide shows and map lectures. I regaled her with stories about the colorful characters whom I encountered or the exotic or unusual places I visited. I probably mentioned multiple times my excitement being a solo traveler visiting a strange place. Lee would listen to me patiently, although by then she undoubtedly had heard me tell these same stories. She would smile while agreeing with me that Ecuador belonged on our short list of potential winter destinations, alongside Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Portugal.

I know that Lee had looked forward to getting a preview of Ecuador before making a final decision about where we would continue our adventure. But less than a year after my return from Ecuador, Lee was diagnosed with colon cancer. This terrible disease and its attendant medical demands forced Lee’s premature retirement from work, a development which did not seem to bother her much. Unfortunately, rather than using this windfall free time to enjoy and explore other cultures together, we instead found ourselves laser-focused on a life and death struggle to restore Lee’s good health.

Alas, Lee did not recover. The simplest version is that Lee’s post-operative chemotherapy treatments predictably had made her so sick that these treatments had to be discontinued. She needed many months to slowly recover her former strength. And thereafter, Lee’s first scan revealed that in the interim she had developed deadly pancreatic cancer. Lee died in a matter of months following the new diagnosis.

The bottom line is that Lee never got to see Ecuador for herself. In fact, we would never travel together again for the remainder of her life.

***

Things have changed for me since Lee’s passing, things that greatly reduce the likelihood I shall ever engage in the kind of extended foreign travel I once dreamed of and carefully planned for over the course of a decade or more.  One never knows, of course, so I still keep my research files buried somewhere down in the basement.

I do so because a part of me still yearns for this adventure. But as this latest story about Ecuador reminded me, lest I might forget, we live in an ever-changing world. In the last several years I have learned the hard lesson that one should never take things for granted.