Life Worth Living: A Journey for Life

By John Fistonich

The four-year journey embarked upon by a fit healthy woman diagnosed with breast cancer and the ripples that linger today. This is a self-help book like no other. There's not any judgment or criticism, no dictating your path to recovery. This book simply provides one person's perspective of a husband and wif

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637677728

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 John Fistonich

Paperback: 978-1-63767-771-1

Hardcover: 978-1-63767-788-9

eBook: 978-1-63767-772-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022903796

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Ordering Information:

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Kansas City, MO 64114

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

From The Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Being Alone

Where to from here?

From The Author

This story is true, or at least true as I see it. The beautiful lady who appears in these pages is my love, my soulmate and always will be. This is her story, my story, our story and carries you through her (our) life, and I have tried to write faithful to the situations we experienced without any embellishment although I have to admit that trying to keep the emotion out of it was nearly impossible; I hope that there is enough left for you to empathise and hopefully learn something along the way.

Our society does not teach us some of the absolute fundamentals of life and worse, we don’t know how to talk about them. I speak of the most basic aspects of our lives, birth, death, illness, grieving when the illness is fatal, or a life is taken in some other unnecessary way. Those left behind will struggle, perhaps for the rest of their lives trying to make sense of what has taken place, why someone has been left disabled, maimed, or worse.

I concede right here and now that this is not the best crafted book you will ever read but it is honest. It is our story told through my eyes and I sincerely hope it helps, even if only one person starts to feel better the anguish constructing this small book will have been worthwhile.

It is an amazingly difficult task to write about the demise of someone so close, someone with whom you have spent more than half your life and that you fully intended to spend the next half with. Some of the text in this little book took multiple sessions to commit to writing as the emotion is still very strong and reliving those moments was almost like being there all over again.

I hope this helps.

John

Chapter One

If I lay here

If I just lay here

Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

(Snow Patrol, Chasing Cars lyrics).

I was working in a bar in Devonport, Auckland New Zealand and got picked up by this beautiful girl; we were engaged at 20 and married in the same year. Within a short period of time, we had purchased some land in the bush in Titirangi at a bargain price (the real estate agent was literally halving the price as we walked by his display window), which in turn was sold in exchange for a beautiful, restored villa. Built in 1903 I think, we were only the third owner; the house was on a large block on a busy road, but we absolutely made do. We bought a business and worked that together-it paid us well for a while then the country slipped into recession, interest rates skyrocketed (at one stage we were paying 28% on our mortgage) and of course, something had to give. The business was sold as was the house and another chapter of life opened. Even at this early stage in our life I believed we were being ‘looked after’ as opportunity and good fortune came to us easily.

Thirty-five years together sounds like a lifetime; many joke that long marriages like ours were a ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ while others laugh that this length of marriage is longer than a life-sentence for murder and of course the latter is true. This time went in the blink of an eye; so much done, so many things achieved, property bought and sold, travel together, a beautiful baby girl and so much detail, so much in between that it would take another thirty-five years to transcribe it. And I have to admit, some of it would bore the pants off you while other parts would possibly make your toes curl. The thing is, we lived a pretty good life together and as a family. I think we were fortunate to have spent nearly eight years together before our bouncing baby turned up. It gave us a partnership in that we had each other, and we were therefore very solid together.

Even she (the baby) was a sign from the gods. It was funny that we had literally spent years trying to grow our own baby without success. We sat down one night and started discussing the potential for perhaps adopting? Unfortunately, there were lots of children available and the added advantage was the nasty little gene that ran through my family that caused things like cerebral palsy could be all but eliminated in an adopted child. We started the process after some genetic counselling with our specialist and a physical examination of my wife revealed an ovarian defect that meant she could never get pregnant.

In between these particular steps in our life, came a birthday present for me that was a short overseas trip to a place I had never been in fact at that time, I had never been outside of my country of birth, so this was a big, nerve-wracking solo. I bravely flew on a Qantas 767 all the way to Townsville which is in North Queensland in Australia and fell in love with the place. The climate, the lifestyle and the easy access to the Whitsunday islands and Cairns in the far north couldn’t be ignored. On top of that a great air service operated by several airlines meant capital cities and international travel was in easy reach. The climate, the cheap living expenses-it was paradise compared to where we were and to me this place was a complete no-brainer. Opportunity seemed to grow from trees.

Returning home after my week-long stay in Australia, I was convinced it was where we needed to be-the first step in our world-wide adventure; Townsville, in my opinion was going to be the stepping-off point but of course the first step in the process was to see if my wife liked it. I told her as much as I could, showed pictures taken with an actual camera, and eventually we agreed that as soon as possible we would take a holiday together and see at least part of North Queensland before making any decisions, which is exactly what we did. We got on the aircraft in Auckland, New Zealand with only about four other passengers and after being expertly looked after by the Qantas cabin crew we were seated and in no-time at all we were airborne. In the early 1980s the airline broadcast the same entertainment to everyone and in this particular instance the movie was horrible (well to us anyway) so we elected to talk and sample the Qantas wine. Looking for a refill I discovered the cabin crew in the rear galley having a party of their own; they gave me a bottle of a nice