It started with CREMATION. A word that Merriam-Webster’s dictionary had featured as the word of the day. Little did I know how this morbid topic would foreshadow the way my life would soon be torn apart.
Jenny read about it, googled it, and even dug up a full journal article from a medical science association’s website about cremation. She talked about it for hours. I thought it was crazy, but she found it surprising that people would want such a form of burial and would even decide what should happen to them after death.
“Their choice,” she had said.
Two weeks later, we were sitting in front of our church’s doctor, holding each other’s hands and listening to his words that confirmed she likely had ovarian cancer. I couldn’t help but think of that word again: “Cremation.”
Why had it come up at that point in our lives? Why had Jenny downloaded a medical journal about it and studied it for so long? Why had she told me about it?
As we watched the doctor in shock, I kept imagining the cancer cells consuming my wife-to-be and reducing her to a walking corpse, much like the act of cremation.
We had come for tests required by our church’s marriage committee: HIV, blood group, genotype, and pregnancy tests. Then they discovered something else that led to another test on her reproductive system, breaking our happy lives and scarring them for good.
Jenny thought it would end quickly and she would soon be with God, so she cancelled all our wedding plans and even accepted half the price we had paid for some things because we couldn’t get full refunds.
She stopped her master’s program, saying she would write an email to the director of the post-graduate school to tell him she was dying soon. She joined the choir and started forcing herself to sing in tune with others. Then she also started knitting and looking for another lady for me.
Cancer and the thought of death reduced her to a shadow, and it broke me daily. I couldn’t do any of the things she was doing. The doctor had asked her to join a closed cancer support group, but they never offered me any support. What happens to the partners of people who are about to lose them to cancer? How should they fight?
I watched our prepared future go down the drain, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was with Jenny through her chemo sessions. I watched her hair fall out gradually until she decided to cut it all off herself. I watched my best friend lose her charm and her smile, and I struggled with the thought of letting go.
I couldn’t.
Jenny came home one day with a beautiful ring with a big diamond on top and told me it was for her replacement. I should propose to the new lady I would meet after her with the ring. It was her gift to her. Despite the pain I felt, I smiled as I took the ring from her. I couldn’t stop her or chide her for suggesting and doing such things; it was her own way of accepting and even healing.
The week before Jenny died, she asked me to wed her in church. It was a Wednesday. Even though I tried to make her understand that I hadn’t paid her bride price or married her traditionally, she insisted I skip all those processes. She wanted to die knowing she had married me at last. I nodded and said I would grant her wish.
“One more thing, I want you to bury me with that ring I bought,” she said.
I laughed through the tears that gathered in my eyes.
“You don’t want me to give it to—”
She didn’t let me finish. “I’m already jealous.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I shouldn’t have been making jokes about such a delicate matter.
I didn’t grant that wish. I didn’t bury my Jenny with the ring she bought. I wedded her against the many protests from our pastors and parents. I did everything else she asked me to do, but I did not throw that ring into her coffin.
READ ALSO: Embracing Love After Life’s Hardest Trials
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