I’ve known my husband since I was 8 years old.  Although we drifted in and out of one another’s lives for the first 28 years, the man who I married was not much different from the boy I met in the 2nd grade.  He would give anyone the shirt off his back.  He always thinks of others first.  He has always been a risk taker.  Prior to his back surgeries, skydiving and dirt biking were two of his favorite activities.  The world has always been his oyster and that balanced out my serious, studious nature.  We were always the yin to the other’s yang.

In the face of dealing with the re-diagnosis of several friends, I have watched my husband transition from a free spirit to a much more serious person.  He has become more reflective and sadly, fatalistic.  Today, in speaking about a friend he lamented that “my time is my time”.  I know this is his way of dealing with the reality that if people he knows can relapse, so can he.  I am now the positive thinker that believes with all my heart that we have beat the Big C for good.  Essentially, we have switched roles.  He needed to come to grips with his own mortality and I need to believe that we have a lifetime ahead of us.  I didn’t realize that I loved him until I had known him for 27 years.  Life is not cruel enough to take him away from me before we have the opportunity to make up for lost time. I am going to continue to believe that – and I have enough positivity for both of us.