'I'll Wait For Him On The Other Side': Terminal Cancer Leads Couple To Marry After 28 Years Together
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- When a person learns they only have weeks to live, they have to decide how to spend those precious moments.
That is exactly what one Anoka man battling end-stage cancer is doing right now.
There are benchmark moments in every couple's story, like when they fall in love, and when they become parents. But for Jodi and Jason Spencer, in their 28 years together, there was one step they postponed.
"We've just felt like we've been together so long and we are married in our hearts," Jodi said.
Those hearts were broke two years ago when they got the news.
"I said, 'Jason, we need to go to the doctor,' and that was devastating to us when they said the cancer has spread already from the colon to the liver to the lungs," Jodi said.
And this past Friday, they found out the cancer is now in Jason's brain. The final stages of cancer that started in his colon, the same cancer that killed his dad.
Like so many others, Jason had put off getting checked -- a mistake he is begging others not to make.
"Do you want to be in a colonoscopy or do you want to be out here scraping together hours, or a week or so?" Jason said.
But there was one regret he still had time to change. Hours after Jason found out he only had days to live, he officially joined his life with Jodi in the chapel of Mercy Hospital. The chaplain and volunteers scrambled to make it happen. Jodi had already bought her dress.
"We waited for that moment. Him looking at me and me looking at him, we finally did it," Jodi said. "Even our boys are like, 'You did it, Mom.'"
Now in home hospice, and just as they vowed, they will live out their days together as husband and wife. Jason says Jodi is his strength, his everything.
"He's always going to have a place in my heart, and like I said, I'll wait for him on the other side," Jodi said.
"Or I'll be waiting [laughs]," Jason said.
Jason says the reason he wanted to spend his precious day sharing this story is to encourage anyone who is watching to go to the doctor if anything seems off, and to regularly get a colonoscopy.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the the Spencer family with their costs.