“A wedding dress that I never got to see her in”.
John Polo has opened up about losing his wife Michelle to cancer in 2016 in a Facebook post which has gone massively viral.
When Michelle was first diagnosed with cancer in 2013, the couple decided to make things official and said their vows at the local courthouse before Michelle went for surgery to remove a tumour from her kidney.
Last year, they were told the devastating news that the cancer was terminal and planned to have a larger wedding celebration but sadly, Michelle passed away before their big day.
Keeping with tradition, she didn’t want John to see her in her wedding dress before the big day and a week after her death, he came across a very special photo.
Looking through pictures on Michelle’s phone, he found one of her in the wedding dress that she had planned to wear, a dress John said made her ‘giddy’ because she loved it so much.
His post, which you can see in full below, features on the Facebook page Better Not Bitter Widower, and John also has a blog of the same name, which you can see here.
The emotional post, which genuinely has us in bits, reads:
“That’s my wife.
In her wedding dress.
A wedding dress that I never got to see her in.
We were married at the courthouse a few days before her first surgery was scheduled to take place.
We rushed there. To become man and wife.
Not knowing if she would make it out of the surgery alive.
After the cancer came back and she was terminal, we decided to plan a real wedding.
She didn’t make it to that real wedding.
She died two weeks before it was scheduled to take place.
I have so many regrets.
Not getting to see her walk down the aisle is atop that list.
But, she got that dress. Her dream dress.
She loved that dress SO much.
While at hospice, she would talk to people about how great the wedding was going to be.
She wasn’t coherent enough to realize that she wasn’t going to make it to there.
Michelle died without me ever seeing her in that dream dress.
A week after she passed away I stumbled across this picture in her phone.
I lay motionless in bed, both happy and devastated.
Tears flowing down my cheeks as I laughed aloud at the memory of how giddy it made her.
My bride.
In her dress.
I want to live a long life.
I want to remarry and have grandkids.
I want to write and teach.
I want to spread my message to the world.
I want to tell them everything I have learned about love, loss, grief and healing.
But.
When it is my time, I am running up there.
No – I am sprinting up there!
To see her.
#in #that #dress”.
Speaking to People about the bittersweet discovery, he said:
“I was happy and devastated at the same time, but if I had to choose one emotion to describe how I felt when I saw it, it would be pride. I felt pride she was my wife”.
Main image via Better Not Bitter Widower
