Living After the Death of a Loved One

Almost 14 years ago, we got married in New Orleans. It was four days before Hurricane Katrina came through and we ended up losing everything. But we fought through it and managed to come out on top. Little did we know that in 201,5 she would have been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer that would change our life completely.

You never really know when the world is going to start throwing things at you. People always say that the bad things in life sneak up on you, and this is true, but even when you know ahead of time that these things are coming, you usually look right past them to the shinier things in life that might be around the corner instead. We fought cancer with everything we had, but in the end, after being declared cancer free, it just wasn't enough.

In 2017, she was declared cancer free by her radiologist and we were over the top excited. We had the rest of our lives to celebrate this win, and even though the chemo treatments ended up giving her severe neuropathy in her legs, we continued to think about all the things we were going to do.

In May of 2019, the cancer had come back. This time it was in her liver and lungs. Along with various other medical issues that were happening, the deciding factor was the MRI that showed multiple tumors in her frontal lobe. It was then that we all knew there was nothing that any of us could do. That is when my whole world crashed around me as I was forced to watch someone full of life slowly waste away in a hospice bed at the local nursing home. This was the most difficult thing I have ever had to witness in my entire life and I almost didn't make it myself.

Cancer is not just a physical disease that causes the individual pain and suffering, but rather an emotional parasite that clings to the love and support given by the family around them. It tears at your very soul with unbounded hatred for all life, leaving you in a state of despair, knowing that there is nothing you can do to make things better for the person you love.

She passed away on Monday, July 29, 2019, around 7 AM after fighting for over a month without being able to eat or keep even water down since the middle of June. I now find myself completely alone and in a hopeless situation, as everything the two of us worked so hard to maintain is slowly being taken away, yet again.

It is my hope that there are others out there that have gone through something like this, that might learn how to cope with the loss of a loved one such as I am going through. I hope that people will read my story and see that I am just one man trying to make sense of this world in the best possible way, and if sharing that with others makes it easier for me, then maybe it will make your life a bit easier as well.

But to fully understand where I am coming from, you will have to understand a little bit about my life. This means that I shall bore you with a bunch of chapters from my growing up, going through high school, family life in general, and how a woman from across the country and 20 years older than I ended up changing my life. Buckle up kids because this is going to be one hell of a ride. Some of you have probably gone through the same things that I have growing up, but some of you wouldn’t have and that is where the real story lies.

I will be trying my best to post every single day in the hopes of catching the past up to the present. I don’t have a lot of pictures from my childhood, for good reason, but I will do what I can to add video and other forms of media to make the connections for you.