Sarah

"My husband Keith had glioblastoma, which is a brain tumor. He was diagnosed in July 2015, he had a seizure, then he had treatment for 17 months, and he died December 2016.”

“The initial diagnosis was probably the hardest. We knew it was terminal from the beginning, and I think that was the worst for me. Just trying to get my head around the fact that there wasn’t a real cure for what he had.”

“The initial MRI’s were pretty bad too. There was just so much anxiety in them. We’d be wondering what they would find, what they wouldn’t find, whether the tumor was growing. I remember the one MRI I was feeling so confident about, turned out bad. I thought “Keith is doing so well, this can’t be the one”. I was unprepared when the bad news hit me. Other times, I’d be sweating bullets and everything would turn out to be stable.”

“One thing I was really pleased that we did was enjoy the time we had. We decided to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary early. We had it the same place we had our actual wedding. Over 150 friends and family came. We went on a cruise, Keith had made a movie and we screened that, we celebrated a big BBQ on the beach. I'm glad that we truly enjoyed the time we had left together”

“I sometimes think of people who died in a car accident and how sudden that is. You don’t know what your last conversation would be, if you got to say everything you want to say. With us, we got to say everything we needed to”

“What I’ve really learned, and everyone says this, is that you never know what the future holds. You never know what the future is, and I always thought mine was a guarantee. Keith and I were guaranteed to live to 100 years old together, We were guaranteed to see the kids graduate, to see them get married. That was my life. I signed up for that.”

"But you don’t know what the future is. You don’t know what tomorrow is, you don’t know what next week is. And right now, what’s keeping me going is the memory of Keith. I could just lay in bed all day and do nothing, but I choose not to. Right before he died, he told me he would come back as a bird. And whenever I see birds now, I feel a message from Keith saying “I’m thinking of you, you’re doing a good job." In fact, he came to me in a dream and said that”