Like so many people, I was sleepwalking through my life.

It seems strange to say that. I spend hours immersed in nature, watching a fox den and waiting for the kits to emerge. I kayak with loons, roam the woods looking for woodpecker cavities, and travel to Alaska to lead bear photography tours.

I have built a life around paying attention.

But in many ways, I was still sleepwalking.

You get on autopilot. You move through life day by day and week by week, always thinking about what needs to happen next. There is work to finish, another trip to plan, another email to answer, and another goal waiting just beyond the one you are currently pursuing.

Then something unexpected hits you.

Hard.

I had built a successful photography business. I was leading tours, selling prints, and mentoring other photographers. Alongside all of that, I continued working in my full-time career. I was beginning to think seriously about retirement, although it was still several years away. My husband and I had plans for what that next chapter might look like.

My husband and I on a recent trip to Newfoundland after his diagnosis 

While I was away on a work trip, my husband booked a doctor’s appointment. For him, that was unusual enough to get my attention. The only reason I knew about it was that an appointment reminder arrived in our email.

When I returned home a few days later, I asked him why he had made the appointment. My husband was 56 years old. He told me he had been falling frequently while playing in his men’s beer league hockey games. He loved those Sunday nights. He had managed the team for more than 25 years. It was his opportunity to have fun, get out with the guys, and skate.

But something had changed. He was struggling to stay on his feet.

Our family doctor ordered a CT scan, imaging of his back and head, and several other tests.

Many lives ago, or at least that is how it feels now, I worked in health care. I have a four-year degree in Medical Laboratory Science and spent time doing medical research and working as a laboratory technologist before moving into education.

That background meant I knew enough to be dangerous when it came to health care. I could read medical reports. I understood anatomy, physiology, and disease processes well enough to recognize when something was seriously wrong. I could also speak the language of health professionals.

I was at work when my husband’s CT report arrived. It was near the end of the day, and my husband was already on his way to pick me up. I was talking with one of my employees while attempting to multitask, as I always seemed to do. I opened the report and began reading.

Then I stopped.

I stopped talking. I stopped thinking about everything else that had seemed important only seconds earlier.

I told my employee that I had to leave.

I walked out to the vehicle, got in, and looked directly at my husband.

“The doctor’s office is going to call you. They are going to want to see you immediately. You should be prepared to go off on sick leave.”

My husband had been in the same career for almost 30 years. He was a foreman with our county, responsible for transportation and utilities over his career. His work was an enormous part of the life he had built.

The doctor called.

We saw him the next day, and my spouse was immediately taken off work. He is now on long-term disability.

What followed were months of appointments, tests, neurologists, and other specialists. Eventually, we received the diagnosis we had desperately hoped would not come.

Multiple System Atrophy, cerebellar type.

MSA is a rare and terminal neurodegenerative disease. It gradually takes away a person’s ability to move, speak, eat, and care for themselves. It affects the functions most of us never think about, like regulating blood pressure, regulating body temperature, swallowing, and digestion, because our bodies simply perform them.

My husband has been active throughout his entire life. Now we know that he will eventually require a wheelchair. Speaking and eating will become increasingly difficult. He will lose much of his independence and require more care as the disease progresses.

There is no cure.

This year, our annual trips to Jasper and Grasslands National Parks felt different.

These are places we return to year after year. They are woven into the story of our marriage and our life together. We have walked through the mountains, crossed the prairie, watched wildlife, and made memories in those landscapes for years.

This time, I could not stop wondering whether it might be our last visit together.

My husband and I in Jasper before his diagnosis

The last time my husband could walk through the mountains. The last time he could cross the prairie beside me. The last time we could experience these places in the way we always had.

I was no longer sleepwalking. I was painfully and completely awake. But it should not have taken this to wake me up.

Now, I look toward a future that bears little resemblance to the one I had imagined. A future that will one day exist without the husband I have been married to for 34 years.

My husband and I when we first started dating

The world will still be here, but it will never be quite the same.

Jasper will still be my place, but it will hold memories that make it both beautiful and painful. Our dream of eventually owning a cabin in the mountains is gone. I will retire much sooner than expected so I can care for my husband. My photography business must change to work around his needs and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

My photography is changing too.

I find myself creating images that feel more poignant. I see vulnerability differently. Moments of connection carry more weight. Solitude feels different than it once did. Light disappearing across a landscape is no longer simply beautiful. It reminds me that nothing stays unchanged and that every moment eventually passes.

Perhaps photography has always been about this.

It asks us to notice.

To recognize the significance of a moment while we are still standing inside it.

To understand that the light will shift, the animal will move, and the scene before us will never exist in precisely the same way again.

I understood that intellectually before.

Now I feel it.

I do not know exactly what the coming years will bring. I know they will include loss, difficult choices and changes I am not ready to make. I also know there will still be beauty. There will still be wildlife, wild places, photographs and moments that deserve my complete attention.

And there will still be time with my love. Not as much as we believed we had, but time nonetheless. I cannot change what is happening to him. I cannot reclaim the future we thought was waiting for us. But I can choose how fully I inhabit the life we have now.

I can stop rushing toward the next accomplishment.

I can notice the ordinary moments.

I can allow my photography to say what I cannot always put into words.

Most importantly, I can be present.

Not someday.

Now.

And please know I am not sharing this because I have found a lesson in what is happening, or because I believe every painful experience needs one. I am sharing it because writing is one way I am trying to understand a life that changed before I was ready.