My world came apart, not suddenly, as one who is stricken by natural disaster or personal attack, but gradually, as the emptying of an hourglass. It was an excruciating end to a life, the way my Father went to cancer, and six short weeks from his diagnosis, during which I nursed him and watched him die, he finally succumbed to the light.

Painful as it was to lose my mentor and best friend, I also lost the co-owner to the future site of my dream home, which held an uninsured mortgage and a great deal of construction debt.

Without my father's income, I hung on by my fingernails for several months, but just as fragments of light appeared far down the financial distance, layoffs became the order of the day, and a glacier rolled over the last burning embers of hope when I lost my job.

Feeling alone and defeated, I put my dream property up for sale and said goodbye to the small mobile home that resided there and was my home. My father's and my own labour had gone into it's finishing, and it was my last comfort, the final symbol of a dream held dear in my heart.

Knowing that I had to find a way to live, or else mock the memory of my father's strength, I went looking for a job in the nearby city of Victoria, B.C. After a few long days of uncertainty and fleeting hope, I went for a walk in the summer breeze along the waterfront downtown.

As I walked alone, pondering a minimum two-year sentence to heavy debt, I saw the bench. For no good reason, I read the brass plate: "Grandma Jean, 1898-1998, 'Sit down, Luvy.'"

I had an inkling that someone who cared had invited me to sit, to take a load off. So I sat, feeling the companionship of one I'd never known, feeling the wisdom of one who no longer lived.

A hundred years, Grandma Jean, I thought. You lived in this world for a hundred years. What did you learn?

It took me some time to relax and imagine that she was there, to let her come into my mind to speak to me.

"I learned," she said, "that two years is but the blink of an eye in a lifetime. Dreams die, and are replaced by new ones. I lived a hundred years, dreamed a hundred dreams. I learned that pain does not matter, it is only something to be tolerated, something that quickly fades into a distant memory to be learned from and discarded, leaving only the joy to be lived, loved and cherished always. All things are an experience, becoming a part of who we are. Dreams that are realized become that joy, remembered; dreams failed are left behind. That is the richness of living."

I rose and walked on with purpose, new dreams ahead to be discovered, facing my pain with a new perspective.