The reason I have chosen to reference the unpleasant situation Anthony and I experienced during the first years of our marriage is because of how Anthony handled it. His enormous capacity to forgive, his generosity, and his unwavering desire to keep everyone happy is something I admire even more now with the benefit of hindsight. Forgiveness didn’t come as easily to me because it was extremely difficult to witness the breaking of his heart. Also, I wanted him to fight back but he wouldn’t. When I look back I am both amazed and proud; I had a husband with incredible integrity.
Dissolving a business partnership (especially, it seems, when it comes to farms) is almost like a divorce. Anthony didn’t want to do this at all but his brother insisted. I wonder now why it was even necessary; we could have been one, slightly bigger, happy family, with the addition of me and, later, of Ming.
With the assistance of a single lawyer, Anthony and his brother eventually reached an agreement about the division of land and so on and the dissolution was signed. As I was packing up after selling the farm a couple of years ago, I found the empty bottle of expensive champagne he and I had consumed that evening. On the label I had written “Dissolution day!!!” and the date. I threw it in the rubbish because it no longer had any significance and that is why I am not quite sure of the date.
Anthony never, ever, reciprocated the animosity – not once – but as his health declined in so many dramatic ways, I did wonder if he had internalised his stress and grief at the situation. I was much more feisty and vociferous, but his sad, silent emotional pain had a profound effect on me and I became extremely protective of him.
It is very easy to romanticise the character of a loved one who has died but, in the context of the situation above, I can honestly say that Anthony’s behaviour was faultless. Anthony did forgiveness with the ease in which a child does a cartwheel.
Integrity.
jmgoyder 
And how we, your family, admired him for this. What a beautiful, generous man coming into our family, to enrich and inspire us.
What a splendid man you married, how very sad for all that his brother was so difficult.
You married a good man