CNN
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When Catherine Robinson’s husband died in May 2017, she was left devastated and totally unmoored.
As she lay awake, night after night, in her empty home in Melbourne, Australia, Catherine — who was in her late forties at the time — realized her overwhelming feeling was loneliness.
Catherine had supportive friends and a loving family. But she felt isolated nonetheless, as though no one could really understand what she was going through.
“I tried to talk to other people. I even joined a widows group, but it was very difficult to relate to other people,” Catherine tells CNN Travel today.
Her late husband Pete was ill for some time before he passed away. During his illness, caring for Pete became Catherine’s “whole life.” She dedicated every moment to easing his pain, helping him through the day. This wasn’t easy, but caring for Pete gave Catherine a purpose, even as she worried about the future.
“Then, all of a sudden I went from having this purpose every day to waking up in the morning and not knowing, thinking ‘What do I need to get out of bed for?’” says Catherine.
Months passed in a blur. Catherine’s feeling of isolation only got worse.
“And then, in the age of the internet, I just thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll go online. Across the world, there has got to be somebody else who knows what I’m feeling.’
“And by pure chance, I came across Randy’s blog.”
Catherine stumbled across the blog following a Google search. And after scanning through the first post, she learned Randy was an American guy in his early fifties who’d also recently lost his spouse to cancer.
Randy described the loss of his wife, Sally, calling her “his partner, his best friend and his love for most of his life.” The couple, Catherine learned, had been together since 1984. Randy was struggling with what he felt was the “impossibility of living a fulfilled life” without Sally.
Catherine understood exactly how he was feeling. But she was also struck by the fact Randy’s wife also died in May 2017.
“Our timings were so uncanny,” she says. “We lost our spouses within 12 days of each other. They both went through really difficult cancer journeys, roughly the same time frames as well. So everything that he wrote, I could relate to.”
While Randy’s words were heartbreaking, when Catherine read them, she felt less alone. There was some strange solace in the idea that on the other side of the world, someone else was struggling through the same kind of grief.
Randy’s blog allowed readers to leave comments, and without thinking too much, Catherine typed a message.
“I know how you feel,” she said, including a condensed explanation of her own situation. “Thank you for sharing.”
Catherine hit follow. And a couple of weeks later, she noticed Randy had posted another blog entry.
“Again, it was mirroring everything that I was feeling at the time,” says Catherine. “So I made another comment to the same effect, and that’s when he decided to email me.”
Connecting online
When Randy Mann started blogging about his grief in 2018, his blog was just one of many attempts to find solace in the wake of his wife’s death.
In the nine months since she’d died, Randy had sold his home and quit his job as a TV weatherman. He tried relocating to various places across the US, looking to start anew, and then moved in with family in California.
Nothing seemed to help. He’d lost 45 pounds. He couldn’t sleep.
Looking back today, Randy tells CNN Travel that during that immediate aftermath of his wife’s passing he was “a shadow of the man he once was.”
He struggled, during that time, to look beyond his own heartbreak. So when he started his blog, Randy didn’t expect his words to travel across the Pacific Ocean and be read by a grieving woman in Australia.
“I was just doing anything to cope with the pain of the whole experience,” Randy says.
But when Randy read Catherine’s comment, he was touched. And while he wouldn’t wish his grief on anyone, he also felt some kind of comfort in the idea that his struggle wasn’t unique.
So he replied, thanking Catherine for commenting.
And then, when she commented again — noting once again the similarities in their situation — Randy asked Catherine if she’d mind if he emailed her, so they could talk more directly.
“And so we started emailing back and forth,” says Randy.
As they exchanged emails, talking about their losses and their grief, Randy and Catherine realized there were more similarities in their situation — they were a similar age, neither of them had children, both had busied themselves with work for many years, awaiting a happy retirement that had been taken away from them.
But the thousands of miles that stretched between them left Catherine seeing Randy as more of an “imaginary friend” than a real person.
“To be honest, at that point in time, he wasn’t real to me at all,” she says. “He was someone on the net who understood what I was feeling, but he was also someone that I never really expected to meet in real life. I guess that’s probably why the emails were flowing freely because we didn’t have this expectation of meeting each other.”
A spontaneous decision
As Catherine and Randy approached the respective anniversaries of their spouses’ deaths, Catherine felt she could be candid about her emotions with Randy in a way she couldn’t with anyone else in her life. She wrote of her sleepless nights, her anguish as she relived her husband’s final days.
Randy also felt as though the pain of his wife’s passing was more acute than ever. As April slipped into May, his mind also started to continuously “replay what had happened in the prior year.”
His emails to Catherine increased in frequency. And soon her replies were almost instantaneous.
“In one particular instance, I was at an airport waiting for a flight, and it was about a five- to six-hour delay, and those emails were just going back and forth, back and forth,” recalls Randy.
Randy and Catherine offered emotional support and reflected their experiences back to one another, shared a dark sense of humor shaped by their loss and talked about their respective late spouses, sharing stories of happier times.
And they encouraged one another in their attempts to find a new feeling of purpose, amid the grief.
“He went to the gym. I went to pottery classes. Whatever we could do to try to get better,” says Catherine. “But it didn’t work.”
Then, one day, Catherine and Randy found themselves pondering, via email, whether the answer to their shared despair was some kind of trip.
“People say a change of scenery is good for this kind of situation,” wrote Catherine.
And the next thing they knew, Catherine and Randy were booking flights to Hawaii, planning to vacation together.
They figured “if we get along, great, if we don’t, then at least we go and have a nice holiday somewhere,” says Catherine.
At this point, the two strangers had only ever exchanged emails. They didn’t even know what each other looked like, what their voices sounded like. While they knew a lot about each other’s emotional state, they didn’t really know each other at all.
“Under normal circumstances, neither of us would have done anything like that,” says Catherine. “But it wasn’t a normal circumstance.”
“You just want the pain to stop, and you’re willing to do just about anything to make it stop,” says Randy.
Arriving in Hawaii
In the lead-up to their June 2018 Hawaii trip, Catherine and Randy spoke a few times on the phone.
“I sent him a photo so he finally knew what I looked like,” says Catherine. “But even then, it didn’t register until the plane was coming into landing in Hawaii that I was flying halfway across the world to meet a complete stranger, and he could have been a serial killer for all I knew.”
Meanwhile, Randy’s best friend was concerned Catherine could be a scammer. He advised his friend not to go, even arranging a “code word” Randy could text him, in case things went south.
Catherine didn’t tell anyone she was going to meet Randy. Everything about her decision-making during this time was antithetical to the way she usually lived her life.
“It was very reckless,” she says today. “But at that point in time, we were in such a bad place that we just needed to try anything to get better.”
When Catherine and Randy met in person, they found their email connection easily translated to a real-life camaraderie.
“It was an easy continuation of the conversations that we had through emails and on the net,” says Catherine. “It was just kind of nice to be with somebody who actually understands what you’re going through and is going through the same thing as well.”
They both approached the trip with an intrepid mindset, the “what have we got to lose” attitude. They wanted to make the most of Hawaii, to keep busy and enjoy everything the destination had to offer.
“So the first day, we went parasailing,” says Catherine. “It was like, ‘Hey, let’s try it. Let’s just go up in the air and hang around there for a while, and look at the world from a different perspective.’”
It was exhilarating. Catherine and Randy found themselves laughing, properly, for the first time in months.

Later, on a post-parasailing high, the two went on a boat cruise around the island of Oahu, with dinner and dancing. The next day they went on hikes, admiring stunning scenery.
Throughout, they were emotionally vulnerable with one another, sharing tears as well as adventures.
They both felt relaxed — not quite happy, but not unhappy.
“Sleep came more easily after hours of hiking up Diamond Head, swimming and walking along the beach,” recalls Randy. “It was indeed true that a burden shared is a burden halved.”
But while they’d bonded, there was, says Catherine, “nothing romantic going on.”
But she no longer felt like Randy was her “imaginary friend.” He was a real-life person to her now. Someone she’d connected with. Someone she hoped would become a proper friend.
Randy left Hawaii feeling the same way.
“We got along really well,” he says, adding he felt “not so lonely anymore.”
Still, Catherine and Randy parted with no immediate plans to meet again.
“I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll see him again next year or something,’” recalls Catherine.
But it didn’t seem guaranteed — there were the thousands of miles between them to contend with. And while Randy had expressed an interest in Australia, quizzing Catherine about life there, she didn’t think he’d ever actually come and visit.
“Americans don’t typically come to Australia,” she says.
But to Catherine’s surprise, Randy started planning a trip Down Under. And before long, Catherine was meeting him at Melbourne Airport, ready for a six-week-long adventure.
“I love Australia, I’ve spent most of my life in Australia, I’m very proud of the country. It’s got so much to offer. I wanted to show him the best of Australia,” says Catherine.
“So I put together this beautiful itinerary — I took him to Sydney to see the Opera House and the bridge. And took him to the Blue Mountains to see the caves, because I know that he has an interest in geography. Then I took him up to Queensland, Great Barrier Reef. I took him to Daintree forest” — the oldest tropical rainforest in the world.
The packed itinerary was “a lot of fun,” says Catherine. There were more unexpected laughs, more surprise moments of joy.
For Randy, “it was really the trip of a lifetime.”
And when Randy had first stepped onto the flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne, he’d had an eerie premonition. It was an emotion he couldn’t quite place. A feeling of expectation.
“It was like a voice was telling me, ‘If you board that plane, your life is going to change forever,’” he says.
And as he explored Australia with Catherine, this thought reverberated around Randy’s mind.
By then, he felt they had a “beautiful friendship.”
And Catherine felt their connection was founded on a “profound sense of caring.” It still wasn’t romantic, as such. But it felt like there was something brewing between them.
Growing closer
Shortly after that first trip, Randy returned to Australia on two more occasions.
He and Catherine continued to grow closer.
“After a few trips, when he left, I was starting to miss him,” Catherine says today.
“Then things really evolved,” says Randy. “And our relationship really grew.”
Randy says today that he “fell in love with the country…and eventually with Catherine.”
And on his third trip to Australia, Randy told Catherine, “I think I want to stay here, and be with you.”
In response, Catherine told Randy she wanted him to stay too.
These developing romantic feelings were unexpected, but welcome.
“We felt that we were both very lucky to have very good marriages and it didn’t occur to either of us that ‘lightning would strike twice’ so that we would be so lucky to have another amazing relationship,” says Randy. “When the feelings developed, it was a complete surprise to us.”
“We helped each other,” says Catherine. “What we really developed was more a deep sense of caring, which, eventually, I guess, at some stage, developed into love. We care about each other, after having gone through so much together and understanding each other.”
This foundation of care, support and empathy was “where it all started,” Catherine says. They watched each other find their feet again, start sleeping better, look after themselves again.
Catherine and Randy’s growing connection, and the passing of time, also helped them both “come to terms with their grief, and start to heal,” says Randy.
“And as it grew, we actually found out there are sparks,” says Randy. “And so it’s all there.”

In 2019, Randy started the process of moving permanently to Australia to start a new chapter with Catherine.
Randy and Catherine’s friends and loved ones were uniformly supportive of this new beginning.
“My mother and stepfather, they were absolutely ecstatic,” says Randy.
They’d been very worried about him, he explains, and they could see the change in him once Catherine entered his life.
The first time Catherine met Randy’s mother, on a trip to the US, she was really nervous.
“He’s her only child, and this idea of him moving halfway across the world…I didn’t think she was going to take that well at all,” she says.
But Catherine’s fears proved unfounded.
“She just launched herself straight into my arms, gave me this great big hug and said, ‘No introduction needed, welcome to the family,’” says Catherine. “She really accepted and welcomed me.”
As Catherine and Randy established themselves as a couple in Australia, they agreed they’d return to the US every six months to see his family there. And soon settled into a routine in Melbourne.
While Randy experienced the occasional “culture shock” moving to Australia after five decades of life in the US, he says he never doubted his choice. He knew being with Catherine was right. Minor, practical inconveniences were nothing, in the big picture.
“Emotionally, it was smooth sailing,” Randy says. “I knew this was where I was supposed to be, and this is where I wanted to be.”
Catherine suggests their early emails became a great foundation for a life together.
“We share everything with each other,” she says. “We communicate constantly, and we understand each other very well.”
Past and present lives
This year marks eight years since Randy and Catherine took the trip that changed their lives and began something new together.
Today, Randy, who now has Australian citizenship, suggests going to Hawaii was the “biggest risk” he’s ever taken.
“But they say ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained,’” he reflects. “Life is about making the most of what you have, and not wasting time.”
Eight years on, Randy and Catherine still approach life with a “seize the moment” mentality. They try to live in the present, and enjoy the time they spend together.
“But we also recognize that our past lives were a part of us, and it makes us who we are, so we accept that,” adds Catherine.
As time’s passed, Catherine and Randy’s grief has become less all-consuming. But their losses remain a part of them, and always will. They both respect this, and continue to support each other through the lifelong journey of grief.
“My husband is buried, so I go to the cemetery a lot,” says Catherine. “Randy comes along with me. He helps clean the flowers and put the rubbish away and what have you. It’s actually quite a nice thing that we can share that together and it’s very peaceful, the cemetery, as well. We can use that time to reflect on our past relationships.”
Catherine and Randy still enjoy sharing stories about their spouses with one another — recalling both the funny and the sad, the profound and the mundane.
“I feel like I know his wife very well and he certainly feels like my husband is his best buddy,” says Catherine. “They’re kind of there with us as well.”
The couple also have a rule to “never compare.”
“We don’t do the comparison,” says Catherine. “It’s just: ‘This is how things used to be. This is how I used to be when I was with him. And now I’m a different person. I’m with you.’”
An earth-shattering event also changes a person, Catherine adds.
“If my late husband could see me now, he wouldn’t recognize me, because I’ve changed so much. I’m a different person. I’m at a different stage in my life,” she says. “But the experience I had with my late husband makes me who I am right now, too. So it’s all part of it.”
Living in the moment

For both Catherine and Randy, prematurely losing a partner left them with a newfound appreciation for life and living in the moment.
For much of her adult life, Catherine busied herself with work, imagining she and her late husband would travel when they were older.
“I thought that we’d have all the time in the world, and we were going to do it when we retire,” she says. “So when he passed away, that kind of shocked me into realizing that I shouldn’t have put off so many things.”
Today, Catherine and Randy are “making up for lost time” and prioritize travel, seizing adventures and opportunities whenever they come their way.
“I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, we’ll do that when we’re old,’ because I don’t know if we’re going to get to be old,” says Catherine.
Their attitude, she says, is “let’s do it while we can.”
This includes ticking off some of the places their late spouses missed out on visiting. Last year, Randy and Catherine visited Japan together and rode on the Shinkansen high-speed train — something Catherine’s late husband always wanted to do.
They did the journey “in his honor,” says Randy, and it was really special.
Catherine and Randy aren’t married — mostly because they weren’t sure how to navigate a cross-continental wedding. And they’ve both done the big celebration before. They didn’t feel the need to do it again.
But the couple “often refer to ourselves as husband and wife,” says Randy. They’re each other’s foundation of support and love.
Randy and Catherine also have a dog, and when they’re not traveling, the couple spend their days dog-walking on the beach in Melbourne. They still work, but neither of them live to work and always make time for this routine.
“We’ll grab a nice coffee. We’ll go for a walk on the beach,” says Catherine.
Neither Catherine nor Randy take this simple pleasure for granted — just like they don’t take their unexpected love, their second chance at happiness, for granted either.
“I feel extremely lucky,” says Randy, who often reflects on the randomness of Catherine stumbling across his blog, of the bold step they both took when they met in Hawaii.
“Boy, when you look back at that journey, it’s kind of amazing,” he says today. “This almost feels like it was predestined. It’s really…it’s an odd feeling. It’s just this feeling that, ‘This is where I’m supposed to be.’”
“It’s chance, it’s universe, it’s fate, it’s all of those things,” says Catherine, reflecting on their meeting.
“And maybe it’s our late spouses as well. We often joke that maybe our late spouses got to the other side and got together and got their lists out, and were like, ‘What does he want? What does she want? They look like a good match. And maybe we’ll put them together.’ So, you know, who knows? Maybe there’s an element of that as well.”