Tonight I had a flash of this beautiful memory of my husband. It was from our stay in Rochester, while getting his “second opinion” with the Neurology department at the Mayo Clinic.

While I had been working at my minuscule hotel desk, he went to Target and bought a folding card table so that we could play Magic the Gathering (MTG) while on our trip. The card table took up the entire empty space of the room but we made it work. He used this blue and black rogue deck against my red and green deck. He ultimately won by a sweet combo that I remember just multiplied his faerie rogue tokens to an insane level and wiped me out in one turn.

While this doesn’t appear to be at all significant, it truly is a remarkable moment for me. My husband was never one who liked nerdy things. I had tried to get him to play MTG when we first started dating but he wasn’t interested. Then when he did invest in buying a deck to play… was the same night he found the proof that I was cheating.

Sitting in that room, playing a nerdy game with him is such a bright spot in the sea of growing dark.