2009—A Year of Pain and the Promise of Rainbows: An Inspirational Story of a Special Love

By Sylvia A. Witmore

This book is the story of a woman who had everything going for her until she had a diagnosis of cancer. Her loving husband was beside her all year during the surgery and all chemo-therapy treatments. Then the day she was told that she didnt have to have anymore chemo treatments, she lost her loving husband the next night. This story is about the strength this woman finds after the whole world crashes around her. From the dark, disturbing days of pain and heartbreak she discovers her rainbow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524689018

Sylvia A. Witmore

Sylvia majored in Journalism in college but quickly changed to Creative Writing. She tried for 30 years to reach a publisher but was unsuccessful until 2008 when WHEELS OF DANGER was published by Authorhouse. Since then she has had more books published and this novel with be #11. Sylvia worked in Home Health for 29 years and retired in 2006 to keep two grandchildren and to write full time. Sylvia and CL were married for 40 years before his death in 2009. They have three sons, Chuck, Chris and Kevin and three daughters (not in-law) and ten grandchildren. Donovan is the oldest; Claire is 12, Chaz is 11, Lance is 10, Sherry is 10, Emma is 7, Eli is 6, Liam is 5, Bella is 3 and Kellen was born on 12/10/14. Sylvia loves to travel and spend time with her family. She is an avid reader and loves all kinds of puzzles.

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© 2017 Sylvia A. Witmore. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/15/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8902-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8903-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8901-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906818

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

This book is dedicated to both the Austin and the Witmore families and my wonderful grandchildren: I love you all very much

P.S. Since this is my first attempt at a true story if I have misspoke or gotten some events out of sequence, you are welcome to blame it on my advancing age!

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November 15, 1969

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November 16, 1969

Other books by Sylvia Witmore:

Wheels of Danger

Treacherous Hearts

The Echo of Footsteps

The Voodoo Doll

A Strange Encounter

MADNESS AT MIDNIGHT

MADNESS AT MIDNIGHT REVENGE

White Is For Weddings

Shadows of Merrill Hill

Dawn’s Darkest Hour

Even Roses Have Thorns

Life is not numbered by the number of

breaths you take, but by

the moments that take

your breath away!

-Anonymous

Introduction

I wish for you, the reader, this Old Irish Prayer:

‘May God give you…for every storm, a rainbow;

For every tear, a smile;

For every care, a promise;

And a blessing in each trial;

For every problem life sends, a faithful friend to share;

For every sigh a sweet song and an answer for each prayer;’

Cancer doesn’t have to be a death sentence…just keep the faith.

This book is about my personal struggle with cancer. Originally it was from an undetermined origin, but manifested itself into a mesenteric tumor…a Stage 4 stomach cancer which required immediate surgery then was followed by intense chemo therapy.

It is very difficult to face such unexpected adversities in life but when they are accompanied with the unbelievable loss of an important family member in the same year it can really be catastrophic…to face them both in one year’s time is mind-boggling. Trying to pick up the pieces of your life when your world has come crashing down around you is understandably the most difficult task anyone will ever face.

Max Lucado wrote Struggling with life’s difficulties makes us a little wiser, a little more capable, enabling us to comfort others who experience pain.

I sincerely hope that my story can help someone else deal with a catastrophic illness. I hope that any person facing this will be able to overcome this disease and whatever other pitfalls life throws at them.

The message I want to convey here is that every one has a future; and the way we work toward that goal is life’s own reward. We all need to realize that a diagnosis of cancer is not the end of the world; with faith there is always hope! God is eternal and will always be on your side. The Bible tells us that He will never forsake us if we call on Him in the name of His son, Jesus, who sacrificed His life on that cross so that we might have eternal Life!

I read the following recently and would like to share it. It was a video about The Seasons of Life. I’m not sure who the author is but this is very profound, so I’m trying my best to live up to the words:

‘Don’t let the pain of one season destroy the joy of the rest.

Always persevere; better times are ahead.

Happiness keeps you sweet.

Trials keep you strong.

Sorrows keep you human.

Failures keep you humble.

Success keeps you growing.

But only God keeps you going!’

In this day and time, with all the modern medications available today, as well as the expert care of dedicated, knowledgeable doctors, cancer can be controlled with proper treatment. Of course, there is no cure right now but there are intelligent men and women spending all of their days, nights and years in important cancer research. They dedicate their lives trying to discover a cure.

A diagnosis of cancer is a lifetime struggle but it is not the end. The disease can actually disappear for a while; you can be in complete remission for years, then when you least expect it, it will rear its ugly head again.

But there are two very strong reasons to believe that it can be controlled. If you have enough faith in your Heavenly Father and if your doctor can catch it in time, you have a chance for a good future as long as you have the right attitude…you have to have a strong determination that you will get well.

God closes doors no man can open but He opens doors no man can close!

I can tell you truthfully that a cancer diagnosis or any terminal illness will absolutely debilitate you for a short time; you will feel as if your whole world has come to an abrupt end, but prayer, friends and the support of a loving family can really help you through the worst of every thing.

Background and circumstances may influence who we are, but we ourselves are responsible for who we become.

I have always been impressed by the strength of my mother’s unconditional love for her family, so I can truthfully tell you something she told me years ago:

‘Sorrow looks back; worry looks around but Faith looks up; live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly and trust in our Creator who loves us!’

I could never have made it through a single day facing cancer nor find the strength to get through the next day had it not been for my loving, incomparable family as well as my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says that He will not put anything on you that you cannot handle; when one door closes, He opens another one. Behind every dark cloud, there is a rainbow. I’m still searching for mine.

But there is something I want to share with you right now. I do not know the writer of this but it should be memorized by everyone!

We live on a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea, and you don’t believe in miracles!

I, for one, believe in miracles!

Chapter One

M y name is Sylvia Austin Witmore. I am a wife, a mother and a grandmother with plenty of loving family and friends around me. The most powerful force in life is love and I have had it in abundance with my wonderful family and remarkable husband.

I am a member of the First Baptist Church in Laurinburg, N.C. where my husband served as deacon for two years. After going off the deacon board for a year, he was re-elected as deacon; he also taught Sunday school off and on through the years. I also served on the Church board as treasurer for two years. Both of us really enjoyed working for the Church and on the Stewardship Committee.

My life was complete; I strongly believed I had enough love in my heart to face anything, even the struggles and hardships that everyone of us have to face during our lifetime, no matter how difficult they might turn out to be; or so I thought! But life has a way of rearing up to bite you when you least expect it.

I have always been an avid reader and I’ve always wanted to write romantic suspense novels. Through the years, I’ve written about a dozen books which I tried for years to have published. I received enough rejection slips to paper my bedroom walls, but I was determined to never give up.

However, this is my very first attempt to write a true story; everything else I’ve done in the past was pure fiction which was contrived from only my imagination.

In the past, I was able to write the first draft of my books within six to eight weeks. However, this one has taken me years to finish the first draft. Writing about what really happened to me during the year 2009 was a much more difficult task than I could have realized. I guess it is because I had absolutely no control over the outcome! When you deal in fiction you can control everything.

2009 started off wrong for my family with the election of another Democrat in the White House; the year just seemed to go down hill from there.

We firmly believed that our money went further and our taxes were always less when a Republican or at least a conservative was elected to the White House. But I never dreamed that the election itself would pale in insignificance with the other momentous events that happened in my life during the year 2009.

Up until that year I had experienced a relatively easy, happy and uneventful life. I was the oldest of six children. We were all raised in North Carolina in a sleepy little community with the Seaboard railroad being the largest employer in Richmond County for years. Over two hundred trains used to pass through Hamlet each day heading north and south as well as east and west. I used to imagine the far away places those trains would finally end up with their passengers and I would make up stories of the kind of life those passengers might have lived. Of course I never knew any of them at all, but I had a very vivid imagination and it was fun to dream about their successes in life, if they had fallen in love, and how many children they would bring into the world or what career they chose. In Hamlet just about every high school graduate tried to obtain a job with the railroad except for the ones who chose military service or college.

My father was a trainman and did a lot of traveling leaving mother with the responsibility of raising six children almost alone, so naturally she was unable to work out of the home. Mother was an accomplished seamstress and did a lot of sewing for us and other customers as well; she also sold Luzier cosmetics, Sarah Coventry jewelry and was a member of the Avon President’s Club for years.

We had a wonderful life while we were growing up.

We had two very loving, generous parents, a set of grandparents living in Chesterfield, S.C. and lots of cousins.

Papa Hendricks and Grandma were my mother’s parents and they lived south of town on the highway down toward Patrick. They had a big farm and a couple of small fishing ponds at the back of their property which was completely surrounded by acres of farm land.

Grandma came from a hard-working farming family there in South Carolina although originally her family could be traced back to the Smith family related to John Smith who married Pocahontas.

When Grandma and her twin sister, Mary, were five years old, their mother died in childbirth along with the baby. That left Grandma and her sister, Mary, tending house and cooking for the men in the family who had to work out in the fields all day. They had to stand on chairs to cook the food which was served three times a day but since there was no one else available, they were responsible for the meals to feed the hardworking men toiling in the fields. In spite of such adversities at the tender young age of five, they managed to grow up into strong, determined young women, who then married and had families of their own.

Our mother was a strong and determined woman and I guess I have inherited some of those traits from my grandma as well as Mother.

Our Papa Hendricks was a tall, robust, commanding man with a deep, booming voice. He was tall, brown haired with blue-eyes and with his bluster and outgoing personality he reminded all of us of the actor, Walter Brennan. His family was of European descent, mostly from England and Scotland. Aunt Margaret has since traced the family all the way back to the War Between the States where one of our ancestors was captured by the Union Army and had to sign allegiance to the North before he was released from prison. After that he was allowed to return to his family in South Carolina.

Grandma was short and little, hardly weighing more than 90 lbs. soaking wet. Her voice was sweet and very soft but she was as feisty and fiery as a bantam rooster; she ruled her family members with a loving, iron hand; you did not argue with Grandma!

At one time Papa Hendricks ran a small store down close to the highway; all of us kids loved going there because there was always candy on the counter which he would cautiously hand down to us. He also passed out some type of chocolate drink in a bottle similar to today’s Yahoo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular chocolate drink sold in any other stores. Of course, you can obtain chocolate milk but this wasn’t milk; it was chocolate flavored soft drink; we’d take our candy and our drinks along with those wonderful Moon Pies before we’d run outside to play. There was always plenty of outdoor space for children to explore. It was always a special treat for all of us to visit our grandparents.

Grandma carefully tended a vegetable garden so she’d always have fresh vegetables to serve with whatever meat they were lucky enough to have on hand at the time. They slaughtered their own hogs and hung the hams up in the smokehouse so there was always country ham to go with the daily hot biscuits she cooked.

Papa also grew corn, sweet potatoes and field peas on the farm so it was left up to our grandma to prepare the vegetables and keep tomatoes, okra and cucumbers in the garden growing there nearest the house. He also grew fields of cotton through the years.

One year the Seaboard railroad trainmen went on strike in September so we were all taken out of school and the whole family went to Chesterfield to pick cotton to earn money until the railroad strike was finally settled.

I can tell you from hands-on experience that picking cotton is one of the hardest jobs anyone will ever do; it is constant, bending over, back-breaking work. I could never do that all day. Picking cotton ruins yours hands, your nails and the constant bending over to release the white cotton balls from their hulls is hard enough but then dragging that cotton bag around with you up and down those long rows played havoc with your back. Unless you wore a bonnet, your face would be sunburned. Another horrible thing was the big mosquitoes that attacked every surface of your body not covered by denim.

As small as our grandmother was, she could out-pick anyone else in that cotton field. Her bags would be loaded with cotton by the time she reached the end of her row; mine always only had about a fourth of that amount, and she’d come down the next row behind me heading for the end with another bag almost full, then she’d tease me about speeding up.

I really hated those hours out in that cotton field. I would much rather have been sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch reading a good book. Grandma would lift my bag, telling me with a smile that I wasn’t picking fast enough. One day I even picked up several heavy rocks and put them in the bottom of my bag so it would weigh more on the scales.

That didn’t work either. Grandma found out and made me sit right down and pick every little rock and stone out of my bag before I could leave the cotton field to go to the house for supper. You can bet I didn’t try that again!

One afternoon my brother Glenn was very sure that his cotton bag weighed at least one hundred pounds and he was so proud of that. You always got a whole dollar bill if it weighed that much but Granddaddy jerked Glenn’s bag off the scales before the hands quit moving around then told him that he only had ninety-nine pounds so he counted out ninety-nine cents to give him. Glenn was so discouraged he never wanted to pick cotton again.

During the long summer days when we were visiting, some of our cousins were there and we always had a wonderful time playing outside together for hours.

I can’t tell you about the farm and those wonderful times we had while we were there without describing the food our grandma always prepared; she’d actually cook for days when she knew that she was going to have company. Grandma was very religious but she knew that good food was an important staple in a working man’s day to day life so she always set a huge table.

Grandma didn’t have just one meat and a couple of vegetables and desert each meal; oh no! On Sundays there was usually fried chicken, ham, country-fried steak with gravy or either a roast with gravy. There was always both potatoes and rice cooked along with every kind of vegetable you could imagine: corn, peas, butterbeans, string beans and okra. They always had both cornbread and hot biscuits with Grandma’s molasses and butter smothered on the hot bread every meal. They also owned a cow so the butter, sweet milk and buttermilk were always fresh.

There were always two cakes and at least two or more pies in the pie safe in the dining room at all times; her homemade coconut and pineapple cakes were unbelievably good. Grandma never fussed when a child wanted more than one dessert; she said we’d just work it off playing hard whenever we went back outside.

However, Grandma didn’t tolerate any misbehavior at all; she kept a small switch in her kitchen at all times and she wasn’t afraid to use it on our bare legs…if the switch ever disappeared, she would send us outside to pick our own switch. If it was too small, we’d have to go back outside and get another one; sometimes that action usually warranted a second swipe with the switch.

I loved the way my grandma said our Daddy’s name… ‘Glenn’ as if he was so special to her. I remember one night when Papa came to the table after a couple of drinks out in the barn, we were eating field peas. Daddy kept cutting up pieces of hot pepper to slip over on Papa’s plate. The longer he sat there eating peas, the redder his face became. I don’t think he ever realized what Daddy was doing because he didn’t get mad or say anything but our dad was grinning the whole time he was eating that night.

Our cousins, Joyce, Margaret-Ann and Albert, Jr. as well as my brother, Jerry Lynn and I got in trouble with Papa one hot summer afternoon. We slipped outside to the barn, found the bottle of whiskey he kept stashed in the hay loft and poured it out.

We knew that grandma didn’t allow drinking liquor in her house; she thought if you drank spirits that the devil would control your soul; she told Papa that lips that touched a whiskey bottle never touched hers, but she did keep a bottle of some type of brown whiskey in her medicine cabinet up high in her bedroom just for medicinal purposes. If we ever complained of a sore throat or heaven-help-us if we had a bad cold, we were dosed with a tablespoon of whiskey which she mixed with honey, vinegar and lemon; then we were sent off to bed. It tasted awful; we had to hold our noses to get it down but nine times out of ten, the next morning we no longer had a sore throat and our colds were almost gone as well.

But that particular afternoon, the five of us were real rascals; we poured out Papa’s whiskey then filled the brown bottle back up with that dirty old soapy water from the kitchen sink then slipped it back up in the hayloft where he had it hidden.

We were all out in the side yard playing ball when he went out to the barn that day. A few minutes later, he came rushing out of the barn mad as a hornet. He screamed all our names and we all scattered, running off in five different directions…but he eventually caught up with every one of us. When he did, he had a switch from a bush near the back door. That slim little limber switch could really sting; it always burned our legs something fierce. I didn’t ever bother his whiskey bottle again; neither did any of the others. We never told our grandma what he was doing out there in the barn either; sometimes it is just better just to leave well-enough alone. She probably knew it so that’s why she always kept her medicinal bottle of spirits well hidden.

I guess during those visits with our grandmother, folks could have called us druggies. Grandma drug us to her Church, she drug us to all the revivals every time the doors were open; she drug us to funerals making us sit still and be quiet. Also you had to be reverent all day on Sunday. It didn’t matter if you felt bad or didn’t want to go, if a service was being held close by somewhere, we had to go. You couldn’t cut out paper dolls or go to the movies on Sunday either. That was the Lord’s day, a day for rest and not for any frivolous activities.

The entire family loved going to the farm out on that road from Chesterfield. We loved visiting with our aunts, uncles and numerous cousins. The cousins were all close to the same age. Believe me, there were always a lot of cousins to play with us.

Grandma’s actions had a profound effect on my mother because she was the oldest girl in the family, which in turn, as Mother’s oldest child, had a profound effect on me! But the unconditional love from those two women always outweighed the stern rules that all of the children had to follow.

There were a lot of beautiful antiques in our grandparents’ farm house in South Carolina. One china cabinet was the most unusual one I have ever seen. It was completely surrounded by round glass panels which sat up high on a slim pedestal underneath. The top part could be rotated all the way around so even the dishes stored in the very back could be easily pulled out when necessary.

There was a beautiful mirrored highboy on the right just as you entered the front door with hooks on each side to hang coats or hats. The seat would lift up for storage underneath and it was fun to sit there and read the old Farmer’s Almanac that Grandma stored there.

All the beds in the bedrooms had high headboards and footboards. Those beds were called sleigh beds and had several mattresses filled with soft, downy fabric; you would sink into the middle when you climbed up on it. Several of us girl cousins would sleep in one of those big beds and we’d giggle together until Grandma told us to hush and go to sleep.

The Austins were our dad’s parents who were all from Union County near Monroe in a little community called Midland or Unionville. They both died before any of us were ever born but Daddy had plenty of brothers and two sisters left; they all had young children as well so we were able to visit them sometimes but never as often as the other grandparents.

Daddy was a double Austin. His mother was Elizabeth Austin until she married John A. Austin but their families were not related unless it was way back during the War Between the States.

I remember Mother telling me that she first learned to drive when I was a baby. We were living out on the farm but Mother had never used the reverse gear in the car. Well, Mother and Grandma left the farm to drive to town one day during the middle of November. Recent rain storms had caused the creek to overflow its banks, so the bridge was completely buried underwater.

Grandma started yelling at Mother that she had to back up; they couldn’t go forward due to all of that water on the bridge. Mother told her, she didn’t know how to back up. Well, Grandma told her that she better learn real quick because she didn’t feel like swimming in that cold creek water.

Aunt Margaret was mother’s youngest sister. She and Uncle Dal lived in Mt. Croghan which is in Chesterfield County. They had four girls, Delores, Gail, Belinda and Jenny. We loved visiting them when the peaches were coming off the trees. We loved that fresh fruit every year. Aunt Margaret would also make delicious homemade peach ice cream.

I learned to drive one summer while I was staying with them. I drove Uncle Dal’s tractor as well as his pickup but during the learning process I ran over several of Uncle Dal’s peach trees. That accident didn’t hurt the truck much but those trees probably never did have many peaches after that.

Originally Mother and Daddy had a farm in Union County before we moved to Cheraw, S.C. Daddy was working for Rainwater Furniture then. We lived on Christian Street; there was a little red private schoolhouse just around the corner so I was able to go there for several mornings a week. I enjoyed school very much because I wanted to be able to read like all the adults around me.

In 1943 and 1944, World War II was being fought in the Pacific Theater and although Germany surrendered in May of 1945, Japan continued to fight until the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in July.

During that awful time of war when more soldiers were needed, our father was given a choice of going to work in Hamlet for the Seaboard Railroad or actually going into the army for the next two years.

Well, with my younger twin brothers, Glenn and Lynn, still babies, Mother was devastated at the idea of having her husband go off to fight in the war, leaving her alone with three small children.

After Uncle Dal came back from the war, he became the school superintendent. Then they left the peach farm and built a new house in Chesterfield and Uncle Dal became the Justice of Peace there in that county.

Uncle Dwight Hendricks and Aunt Sadie lived in Mullins, S.C. They didn’t have any children but they were both doting relatives so we also loved to see them come visiting as well.

Uncle Clyde and Aunt Virginia Hendricks had five sons living right there in Chesterfield: Michael, Everett, Jeff, Brent and Greg. Of course they lived the closest to our grandparents so they were over at the farm house a lot more often then any of the rest of the family.

Aunt Bess and Uncle Ted Roscoe lived in Bonnie Doone, N.C. with their daughter, Martha, but with Uncle Ted having relatives living really close in nearby Patrick, they visited the farm as often as we did.

Aunt Madge and Uncle Woodrow Richardson lived in Marion, S.C. with a son, Woodrow Jr. and a daughter named Linda.

Aunt Grace and Uncle Albert White had six children also: Frances, Joyce, Albert Jr., Margaret Ann, Emma Jean and Louise. They actually lived the closest to all of us. While they were staying in Cordova we were able to visit back and forth constantly during the summer months.

In addition to all of them, there were extended family cousins who came visiting also. I mentioned Grandma’s identical twin sister, Mary. She also had a family of her own with plenty of children and grandchildren who also visited during the summer months. Today’s families just do not seem to get together as often as they did during those days.

Mother’s two brothers, Dwight and Clyde Hendricks, as well as Uncle Dal, were already serving our country overseas.

I remember hearing Mother explain that every adult in the family was worried about them the whole time they were fighting that war. Of course, the twins and I were much too young to realize what was happening except I knew our mother was upset about something and she cried often.

My little brothers were always energetic and busy little bees…as toddlers, what one of them didn’t think of, the other one certainly did. They were always getting into trouble with Mother. If she dressed them alike when we started to go somewhere, you could almost set your watch; because usually about ten or fifteen minutes later, one of them would be filthy so Mother would have to change their clothes all over again.

They could always find something in the house to get into to mess up their outfits…a cup of coffee or juice bottle left too close to the counter somehow ended up on the front of Jerry Lynn’s pants or he would find an uneaten morsel in the