Given Time Living Our Last Months Together-Helene Park Bigelow

Given Time Living Our Last Months Together
Helene Park Bigelow
Fithian Press/Daniel & Daniel Publishers, Apr 7 2014, $14.95
ISBN: 9781564745538

In 2005, seventy-one year old Helene and sixty-eight years old Ed, a couple for over three and a half decades, enjoyed walks on the Maui beach though he always wore a hat to keep sun radiation off a spot on his head. When he went to the doctor for a routine biopsy of that spot, neither were concerned as both had skin biopsies before that came up negative; though Ed was warned as a teen that this spot, probably harmed by swimming and sunning at Lake Michigan and he diligently protected for fifty years, could someday be a problem. Ed’s prognosis was the dreaded “M Word” Melanoma. He soon found out that the cancer had spread and with chemotherapy he could live a few extra months. Wanting to spend as much time as he can with his beloved Helene, Ed chose chemo.

This profound memoir provides a powerful look at a loving couple sharing their last few months together as much as possible in the same upbeat manner they had for the thirty-five years before Ed’s death sentence. Besides a brief look into their shared lives together (including raising three children) before the M Word, Helene Park Bigelow provides a deep glimpse into the impact on the caregiver as she watched Ed’s deterioration; if God forbid I am in the same situation as her I hope to be as strong as her. Though the Bigelow’s wanted another thirty-five happy healthy years together, they know what the Navaho told Ed at Window Rock that “There are blessings, there are blessings , there are blessings”; and they surely were blessed.

Harriet Klausner