Chapter 1

The last two years had been progressively worse. Jenny's health was the issue. The cancer had been caught but the cure was terrible. What was really bad was that surgeries and chemo didn't work despite the pain she suffered. Her death was a blessing for her because the pain was terrible until a month before the end.

We had prayed for healing. Our children had prayed. Our church had prayed. It was all to no avail.

After the last scan in the middle of July, the doctor called us in and said that the cancer had metastasized through her body and there was nothing further to be done. He gave us the number for hospice.

We went home and prayed and cried together. After an hour, Jenny said, "Paul, we have to move forward. I'm scared. You're scared. However, we are together and we have God. Our love for God and for each other will carry us through this, too. We're going to have to talk to April and May. We haven't lied or hidden the truth from them and we shouldn't start now."

"I know Jen. This situation just wasn't in our dreams. We will get through it. We pick up the girls from camp tomorrow. We will tell them then."

We drove to the camp and met the girls. We took them to a picnic table. April takes after me. At eleven, she is tall and skinny. Her sister, May is nine. She is shorter and heavier though not by any means fat. May looks like pictures of her mother at that age. Jen had developed, by the time I met her, into a beautiful woman.

We told the girls that the doctor had found more cancer and that it had spread to the point where there was nothing more to do. Jen said, "At least, I won't have another operation or more chemo that won't work and will hurt me or make me sick." All of us had tears in our eyes. She continued, "Your father is going to need your help to get through this time. I will be getting weaker as the cancer eats my body." She shook herself.

"Girls, it's too late to save me from this disease. I hope that one of you might find something or help someone to help other mothers in the future. I'm not the only mother who won't see her daughters grow into the beautiful and wonderful women you will be. Your father will need you to hold him when I can't so he can cry.

"This was not our plan and God didn't cause it. The world is evil and things in it can cause us to suffer losses. I hold Paul's words and I, too, will run the good race. Elsewhere, he writes, 'To live is Christ and to die is gain.' We have time to say 'good bye' and to care for each other as we always have. I love your father and each of you very much."

We drove home and proceeded to live but to prepare for Jen's end. In church, we prayed for healing if that was God's will but more than anything else we prayed for peace. Jen wasn't given healing but she was given peace. Marie Jones was our assigned hospice worker. She told us that she had never worked with a cancer patient who had less pain than Jen. I thanked God for that. There was little else at that time that was good to me.

In mid September, Jen passed away in the night. I woke up next to her still body. We had still been able to sleep together. I realized she was gone and leaned over to kiss her lips one last time. "Good bye, my love. I will watch over the girls." I prayed and then got out of bed to make the calls as we had been instructed. Marie came with a doctor from hospice. The coroner came to take her body away. The girls got to kiss her one last time. Jen and I had talked about that with the girls. Jen told them that she would be watching from heaven in her glorified body.

Jen and I had also talked about another subject. She wanted me to be open to another marriage. She said, "The girls will need a mother and you will need a wife, Paul. I love you too much and we have been too happy for you to avoid romance. I won't ask you to promise anything other than just to be open." In November, April told me that Jen had made May and her promise to be open to a new mother and for me, their dad, a new wife. April said, "Dad, she told me that our new mother wouldn't be her but would love us if we would let her just as much as she does.

"Dad, what did she mean? I can't love someone else as much as Mom."

I hugged her and we cried for a bit. "Your mother is a very smart woman. She doesn't expect you to forget her but to allow someone to carve out a new space in your heart for your love. She has told me the same thing.

"Ape, one day you will meet a young man who you will love as your mother loved me. Does that mean you will love me less or your mother less? No, a new area in your heart will be opened for that young man. You just have to be open to that new person and allow them that place."

Jen's parents divorced many years ago. Her father had gone off with a younger woman and her mother had never remarried. For years, she had joined us at my parents' house for the holidays. We celebrated Thanksgiving again the same as always at my parents' house with Jen's mother, my brothers and sisters and their spouses and children. It was fun though subdued. Christmas was, for me, even worse. We, the girls and I, managed to get decorations up but it wasn't the same. I just knew I was blessed with two intelligent, mature daughters who were strong enough together to help their father as he stumbled through this time in his life.

We stayed home for New Years' Eve and welcomed the year watching television and drinking non-alcoholic eggnog. Our church had been wonderful and we were kept involved through the youth activities and my Sunday school class. There were older men who could be around to listen when I needed someone to scream at. Fortunately, that wasn't often.

In our jobs, we had good benefits including life insurance. Early on we had bought policies and converted them to personal ones in case we changed jobs which Jen had actually done. There was plenty of money and I was paid well for my work as an Associate General Counsel. I had no intention of quitting because it was interesting work with plenty of intellectual challenge.

I buried myself in my work and my girls. It was lonely but I kept busy and only felt the real pangs of Jen's loss in the dark of the night in our lonely bed.

I visited Jen's gravesite often and talked to her while I knelt. I prayed to God and then talked to her. I always left with a warm feeling of her presence and love as well as of God's presence and love when I went home. Any time, either daughter wanted to go by herself or with me, I took them.

I got through the second Thanksgiving and Christmas with a little less pain. I was managing to make a life for just me and the girls. It was the next spring when things changed.