As it is now...

My husband and I decided he needed to stop working on November 1st of 2007, and do what we could to enjoy what time we had left. We had never wanted to hear a time limit, however inadvertently I received a possible time frame when I asked our doctor his opinion on having more children. Of course I didn’t real want to believe my husband could ever really be gone, and we didn't want to live our lives with this impending doom dictating our future. My husband would continue to make plans as far in the future as he ever had. Our doctor asked my why I would bring children into a world where they would only have a father for 5 years at the most. I finally got an answer to a question I never wanted. I never told him, and if he ever had a timeline he never told me...I think we both wanted to protect the other from what we already both knew. By this time my love had been living with cancer for almost 3 years, and working constantly, 80hrs a week. I was excited to have him home to spend all of his energy with me and the kids. We decided to mortgage our home, take our equity and spend our time in a perpetual vacation. It was amazing to have him home for the first time in 12 years of marriage, and although I have heard horror stories of retired couples going mad once they have 24/7 with each other, we were able to easily adapt to our new situation. For the first time since we've had children, we took a vacation without them. He was a different person, maybe because of the free time he discovered, and in part because of the treatment, and medicines he was taking. We found way to enjoy the new aspect life presented him, and found humor in some of the odder quirks. We did things together we had never done, and communicated better than we ever had. To see him be able to give up on all his perceived notions of men bringing home the bacon, and instead just relax, had a profound effect on our family.