Even though she was only in sixth grade, Rosemary Moeller remembers feeling inspired when President Kennedy fulfilled his campaign promise to promote goodwill and development abroad by creating the Peace Corps. The creation of this new agency offered her a sense of wonder about what might lie beyond the boundaries of the only home, and country, she knew. This wonder became such that when the Peace Corp application arrived in the mail right around the time she was finishing up first master’s degree, she jumped at the opportunity to sign up, putting all of her other goals and dreams on hold.

The Peace Corp sent Rosemary nearly to Timbuktu. Literally. And it was there, in the splendor of Africa, she met her husband-to-be, Lester Moeller. Lester had come to serve in the Peace Corps from a distant, faraway place called Miller, South Dakota. Actually, he came from a family farm town just outside of Miller to be precise, which was just about as far away from Rosemary’s New York State upbringing as it was from Timbuktu.

When Rosemary thought of South Dakota, she thought of the brilliant landscapes of the Badlands and the Black Hills, which she had visited with her family as a child. But Miller, South Dakota is neither desert-y or mountain-y, nor does it have many trees. Rosemary found herself living on a vast expanse of prairie when she returned with Lester from their time overseas.

Slowly, she learned to find the beauty in the horizontal tranquility of this expansive landscape, where the night sky seemed to stretch on forever. Even though it was far from the life she had imagined for herself, she thrived in it, teaching at small town high schools and a college an hour away from her home. Along the way she earned more master’s degrees and became a phenomenal poet, authoring the aptly entitled, “Long-Term Mates Migrate Great Distances.”

In recent years, having grown tired of the intensity and monotony of South Dakota’s brutal winters, Rosemary and Lester decided to relocate to Cape Cod to spend their retirement together. But those plans were painfully disrupted after Lester passed away after a short and sudden struggle with cancer.

Now, Rosemary finds herself embarking on the difficult adventure of life after loss. Missing the soul mate she spent her life with and deeply loved. She says, “I can’t argue with what is. Everytime something great happens, something funny, something that makes me happy, I miss him. But there’s nothing to do about it. I can’t go around moping, to me there’s no point. So, I do my best to stay happy because happiness is where I feel most connected to him.”

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