Memorial Weekend 1996

For most families, Memorial Day weekend is the start of the summer season. For others, it is a time to remember those who gave their lives in service to their country. For me and my two children, we remember it as the anniversary of Cindy, their mom and my wife, going home to be with the Lord. On that Sunday morning in 1996 she ended her fight with breast cancer. 

In November of 1990, after noticing an unusual formation in her breast, she went to the doctor and found that she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer. She had told me years before that as happy as she was with our family, she felt that something bad was going to enter her life that would change everything. At the time I told her that she was being silly, because at heart Cindy was a very positive, up-beat type of person. After coming home from her appointment, she couldn't stop crying, and I tried my best to comfort her. In the morning, however, she was up and ready to give her all to beat this disease.

Over the next few months we did the chemo treatments and the surgery to remove her right breast, along with reconstruction. The picture above was taken by a dear friend the day before we began our struggle. Our doctor told us that the biopsy had shown that her cancer was very aggressive and was being encouraged by her own body's estrogen. As we drove home she said, “This thing is going to kill me.”

The next day, however, Cindy was ready to go on as best she could. The doctors gave her some meds that kept her estrogen away from the cancer, and within a few months she was cancer free– as far as they could tell. With that good news, we went back to living a normal life, enjoying all that we had with our church and family. 

Then, in July of 1995, Cindy discovered a little pimple on her right side, and a biopsy revealed that her cancer was back with a vengeance– it was now in her lungs and brain. More chemo followed, but only with the hope of slowing the cancer. 

As a family we were able to get away to Hawaii in February. Towards the end of that trip she whispered to me out (of the kids hearing) that she felt terrible and wanted to go home. 

A few days later, I came home and found her planning her memorial on the computer, smiling as she did so. That was just the kind of person she was! Yet as the days passed, she could do less and less and spent more time in bed. One morning she had finished her shower and was sitting down on the commode wrapped in a towel and she said, “I’m done for the day.” We laughed.  Then she said to me, “Honey, why is this happening to me?” I told her that I didn’t have a clue, and we both ended up crying in the bathroom. Cindy had never smoked, only drank an occasional glass of wine, had become a Christian when she was in grade school, married a Pastor, and sang in the church worship team. If there were ever anyone to not deserve cancer, it was her.

On the morning she passed, I was asleep in the recliner near the bed and I awoke around 2am, not hearing her (now usual) heavy breathing. I lay down beside her, told her I loved her, kissed her, and she was gone. It was Sunday, and so we went to church and told the congregation. We sang some songs, told some stories about their experience with Cindy, and then the three of us went back to an empty home. Over the next few weeks I had to catch myself from saying to the kids, "When your Mom comes home…” because she wasn’t.

The other day I was reading an article in a Christian magazine and I found the quote, “If Christ is raised, nothing else matters. If Christ is not raised, nothing matters.” Over the years I have pondered the question Cindy asked her husband and pastor in the bathroom that morning– why was this happening? If my faith is in vain, then everything is all the luck of the draw, and there really is no good answer to the question of why.

And yet, even if what the Bible proclaims is valid and true, I still have no good answer to that question we all ask. In my 43 years as a Christian, I've seen some really strange and difficult events take place. Afterwards I sit back and say, “What was that all about?” In the end, as I look at the twenty years Cindy was in my life, I can’t explain why she passed as she did at such a young age. I do have a thankful heart for the grace the Lord gave me through her, the two great kids she blessed me with, and the sure knowledge that we will see each other again. 

Paul wrote that believers "will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” Every Memorial Weekend our family remembers our dear sweet Cindy and the blessed years we had with her. We grieve, yes, but not without hope. 

Some of that hope can be found in the New Testament and as we talk about it at www.calvarymissionviejo.com