In Loving Memory of my Beloved Husband. 1942 - Dec. 13, 2005
"A Circle of unending love"
Looking at the pictures we had taken for our fortieth anniversary, I can hardly believe that the couple looking back at me is actually my husband and myself. The wrinkles on our faces , seem to have snuck up on us both since our wedding day.
Smiling to myself, I recall the young man that my brother brought home to dinner one night well over 42 years ago. It makes me giggle to recall how very irritated I was about HIS being invited to dinner at my house. I had already met the young man by chance a week earlier. I thought he was rude and obnoxious at the time. I rather wished him to Hades and hoped never to lay eyes on him again. Of course, since he became my brother’s best friend, the first impression gave way to finding him charming, and lovable over the course of the next several months. We fell in love and married the following year.
In the springtime of our marriage, nothing seemed impossible to us as we faced our future together. It would however, prove to be a marriage filled with many challenges. The different faith backgrounds would prove hard to overcome in regards to the sanctity of life, which was ingrained in my faith as a Catholic. In sickness and in health it would prove to be the crucible through which we would learn to love and to forgive.
The excitement of the birth of our first and second children was typical of most young married couples. The miracle of life gave us greater vision and commitment to each other and to our young ones. We looked forward to having at least one or two more children. Little could I envision the challenge, fear and heartbreak that the news of our third child’s conception would unleash in our lives in April of 1970.
On that day I was relishing the news from my doctor that we were expecting another child. My husband’s reaction when I told him was the first sign of the battles to come. He received the news with little reaction other than a shrug and he turned away as though it were nothing to get excited about. His only comment was, “We don’t need another child. Two are enough.” I was hurt by his reaction and very confused.
He had begun acting withdrawn and depressed a few weeks before that day. He had denied there was any problems each time I asked about his mood swing and I had thought surely this news would bring him out of his strange mood. In the first five and a half years of our marriage I had never seen him act this way. Our marriage had seemed so solid until this sudden turn of events.
The answer to this turn of events though would not be long in coming. Within hours of our conversation, I received a phone call that would turn my world and my marriage upside down.
I had just put the children down for their afternoon nap when the phone rang. The voice on the other end was serious and very professional in his manner. The man who called was a doctor and he was calling with a report about my husband’s biopsy. A biopsy I knew nothing about. At my rather startled reaction the doctor paused and said: “Christine," has your husband not said anything to you about this?” I stuttered out as best I could, “Well no, he hasn’t, what biopsy are you talking about?” To which he replied, “did you not know that your husband has hereditary cancer and that the scars on his body are previous surgery for this cancer?”
My heart felt as if it would stop from the shock of his words. How could this be? How could my beloved Gene have carried such a terrible secret all these years of our marriage without telling me? I had believed him when he told me the scars were from an accident when he was in the navy. It never occurred to me he would lie to me. I thought we shared everything with one another. Then the doctor said words, which almost turned me to stone. I could hardly believe what he was saying to me.