Remembering Mike

Connie and Mike Summer of 2008

Four years ago today my husband Mike passed away. Mike was diagnosed with cancer in March of 2008. The doctor gave him weeks to live. We prayed for a miracle — we prayed for more time, and thankfully God granted that request and we had 336 more days.

What I have found since losing Mike is that we cling to and appreciate the memories. Mike was fond of saying that it was just the average ordinary days that tended to be the most extraordinary. We spent our time sitting at Cleveland park watching the ducks, sitting at the small local airport watching the airplanes take off and land, and countless hours on the deck out back listening to the crickets chirp and enjoying the evening breeze. And for all those moments, I am forever thankful.

My mother-in-law, Jan Kuhn is also a writer. She has written a book, Hi Mike It's Me Mom about Mike's journey with cancer and the days after. It is now available in paperback from Amazon and the Kindle version will be available soon in the coming weeks. I think she portrayed what our family went through beautifully. It is a story of one man's quest to honor and glorify God with the days he had left.

The last chapter of the book, she gives advice on how we lived with cancer and the things that we found that worked and things we wished we had known.

When Mike was first diagnosed I searched for books that would help me, but they were all about these profound miracles of people beating the disease — I needed to know how to live with disease and how to make the most of things. The book I read that helped me the most was Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture. "Even a wounded lion needs to roar," Pausch wrote and that line helped me to quit hovering.