After our first appointment with Duke, we were trying to relax at the Washington Duke Inn and Golf center after the first exhausting day there. I flipped on the TV to try and escape from the news. Lindy sat on the bed staring at her computer and began to cry for the first and only time. We flew to Duke because the last doctor in Dallas was cold, rude and had seemed to care less about a patients outcome. She was the one that diagnosed her. When Lindy told her that she was going to do in vitro before starting chemo and radiation, the doctor looked at her and said, “thats the dumbest thing you can do. Your not going to be around long enough to have them much less raise them”! Lindy walked out of her office and that is how we ended up at Duke. Their motto at Duke was Plan to Live. And that is exactly what my wife did: she lived on her terms.

She sat on the bed at the Duke hotel, and for the first time looked up what she was in for. The Duke doctor upgraded her cancer earlier that day to stage 4 and it hit her. I determined right then and there that I was going to do everything to give her her dreams. I proposed four months later. Bought her the biggest ring that was 10 x’s over my budget, and we planned a wedding in Italy on Lake Como. Yes. I drained every nickel I had and then mortgaged my future for the love of my life.

She did live fearlessly. She never once gave into the idea that this was going to take her life. She believed it so much, I believed it. We did in vitro and got 4 embryos. She bought a horse and fulfilled her dream of jumping. We traveled a lot and generally lived a normal newlywed life with no fear. We made a plan to have kids (that saga hasn’t ended yet btw) the June before she passed. I was so convinced that she was going to beat this it took the very back seat in our conversations. The very end had me grasping for understanding. I was dumfounded. She was so confident that she would survive this that reality took awhile to sink in. (In some ways it hasn’t sunk in yet).

I wrote this song mostly about our wedding, but more about the fact that we were able to ignore the inevitable.  I read one page in her journal a few months after she passed and she said that the Italy wedding and trip was a dream come true. She said it would forever be her favorite memory. That is what inspired this song.

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