“I’m 83. Been married four times. Divorced twice. The other two passed with cancer.

“I lost my wife, Jewell, on Jan. 19 last year. She was 69. She dealt with that cancer for many years. It spread all over. But if you had seen her walking around, you never would have thought she had cancer. She was always happy.

“Then one day, me, her and the daughter went to the funeral home. I said, ‘Why are we going there?’ My wife said, ‘Hush, you’ll find out later on.’ She didn’t want me to know that she had only six months to live. She didn’t want me to worry. And I tried my best. But sometimes at night when that cancer moved, man, she’d go to hollering. I didn’t know what to do for her. There was nothing I could do but sit there and look at her.

“But she never did complain. That was just the kind of person she was. She was jolly, happy, all the time.

“When we were at church for the funeral service, that’s when I broke down. I couldn’t take it no more. But that’s all right. It’s best to cry. Best to get it all out. Because if you keep it in, it gets worse and worse.

“At the cemetery, oh man, my chest locked up on me. I thought it was my heart. But it was all that stress. I didn’t know it could be so strong. They had to rush me to the hospital. I wasn’t there to see them put her in the ground. I haven’t been back to the cemetery. It’s too hard. I try not to think about the bad stuff, all I’ve been through. I try to keep my mind off things like that.

“Before she passed, my wife told me, ‘You don’t have to worry about me. Because I know where I’m going.’ And that’s a good blessing. Yes, indeed.”

— C.J. Edmond

C.J. is a deacon at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Baytown, where Jewell also was a long-time member. “I used to have dogs when I was young. I had one that I called Bozo. My mother would say, ‘Both you Bozos, get out of that bed.’ Then my sister started calling me Bozo the Clown. It stuck. Everybody at church calls me Bozo. Even my pastor.”

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“I’ve always had this dry sense of humor that she understood and appreciated. When we’d go to a restaurant and the waitress would come up, I’d say, ‘Can you please tell the other waitresses that I’m sorry, but I’m already married.’ And Denise would laugh. We used to laugh a lot.

“But things started to change about four years ago. She was always pretty sharp. Then I began noticing that in regular conversations, she was forgetting things more and more. One time she was crying, and I asked, ‘Honey, what’s the matter?’ She said, ‘I can’t remember my mom’s first name.’

“As things continued, we went to a doctor, who suggested we see a neurologist. That’s when she was diagnosed with early stage dementia. It’s progressed terribly worse from there.

“Her gait has really slowed. Going down stairs or the little ramp outside Walmart is a lot more challenging. She cries two or three times a day. Her delusions make her cry. It’s particularly difficult when it happens in the middle of the night, when she’s crying and angry. It’s really hard to understand how to calm someone out of that.

“Dementia is defintely a cruel thing. But every day, I try to get her moving a little. We try to walk. She loves music. So I’ll put on disco, rock or country, and get her to do exercises to it. It’s only temporary, but it’s something.

“As hard as it’s been for her, I definitely will get frustrated. It takes a lot out of you as a caregiver. It’s a very tough disease to navigate by yourself. So I’ve been in support groups that come on the computer. The other people may not be going through your exact situation. Their personalities may be different. Their strengths are different. But at least it makes you feel like you’re not alone in this.”

— Tim Reed

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“I don’t do too much of nothing these days. Work around the house. Come out here to the park and watch the water. Just relaxing. I’m 74. Sometimes I think about going back to work. I get kind of bored.

“My wife died about two years ago. She was sick for a while, and just started going down. For the last year or so, she stayed in the hospital. So I figured it would be just a matter of time. At the end, it was real hard.

“I had met her at her friend’s house in Houston. We hit it off pretty fast. We were married about 23 years. We would go out and eat dinner. Go to the bowling alley. Go to the casino sometimes. Just regular things we would do together. I think about her passing away. It still bothers me.”

What do you miss most about her?
“The way she bossed me around. She would keep me in line.”

Would you like to meet someone else?
“I don’t mind meeting someone. But I don’t think I’d ever get married again. It’s not that I’m too old. I just don’t want to go back through all that again. I still miss my wife too much.”

— Eugene Gadson

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“My wife had diabetes, and she liked to eat sweets. I would tell her, ‘Baby, please stay away from that.’ She would say to me, ‘Are you a doctor?’ I would say, ‘No, I’m not a doctor. But I watch TV. I see things. It’s not good for you.’ She had to get shots, in the morning and at night. She had to take pills. Her blood pressure was going lower. It was not a good sign. So she had to go into the hospital. She stayed six months. After that, she lost so much weight. I couldn’t believe it. I cried. I waited until her eyes were closed. I didn’t want her seeing me like that. Then she went into a nursing home. I stayed with her all the time. She started getting more and more medicine, and I guess it was all too much. Her kidneys, her heart, they just couldn’t take it. They tried to drive her to a hospital across from NASA. I was in the ambulance with her. But before they got there, she passed away. 

“We were married 40 years. I’m not going lie. It’s hard. A lot of times I wake up at night and start thinking about her. When I do that, it’s hard to go back to sleep. It’s hard when I’m walking around the house and see her picture on the wall. We were together for a long time. I really miss her.

“I’m not perfect. Sometimes I argued with my wife. Oh, did she love to spend money, especially on clothes, expensive dresses. And you would not believe how many purses she had; shoes, too. She had two closets, just for all her things. She probably had 10 or 15 credit cards. I would tell her, ‘Baby, they will eat your lunch.’ But she just loved to go shopping. Near the end, she told me, ‘When I pass away, I want you to give all my clothes and shoes and purses and jewelry to charity.’ So that’s what I did. My wife, she was a good woman. She had a good heart.”

— Jimmy Saciri

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“I took a year break after graduating high school before joining the Marines. I served about 10 years. I was stationed in California and deployed twice to Iraq.

“My son was born just before my second tour. I was there for his birth in October, but by January I was gone. So I saw his first smile on a video, his first laugh on a video, his first steps on a video. That’s when I decided I had to go home. I had to get out.

“Because of the war at the time, we were on stop-loss where nobody gets out. I had to wait almost 11 months longer than I had planned. Unfortunately, my last day in the Marine Corps also turned out to be the last day for my family.

“I knew it was rocky. I was juggling three balls. I was a husband, a father and a Marine. And I was having trouble juggling all three. I didn’t want to part with any of them. But the one I was most willing to part with was the Marine Corps. I had decided to put that aside and concentrate on being a father and a husband.

“But sometimes it just doesn’t work out. It was amicable, though. My ex-wife and I are still friends. I still call my son. He’s 17 and going to be a senior in high school. We talk. We chat online, in text messages. But I haven’t seen him in a couple of years. That’s the real hard part.”

— Robert Ortiz

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“My wife and I just had our 25th anniversary. We’ve been through a heck of a lot together. 

“She lost both sons from her previous marriage. Blake, he was murdered in 1992. He was tied up and stabbed 42 times with a kitchen knife. Ross, he died of a heart attack in 2011. And Jo Ellen, she had a stroke in 2007.

“She worked in food service for Goose Creek schools for 33 years. One morning when she was at work real early, she started feeling bad and then fell to the floor. There was not a soul around, so she tried to crawl to a phone to call 911. About that time, her boss walked in and then the assistant principal showed up, and they rushed her to the hospital.

“It was a major stroke. She has left side neglect, to where she doesn’t look to the left at all. She doesn’t have any use of her left arm, but she is able to walk with a cane. 

“She’s well known in Baytown. Everywhere we go, somebody knows her. The older kids, the ones who graduated from Lee High School, they recognize her and always say hi. 

“To have gone through so many traumatic things in her life and to be able to survive like she has, my wife is an amazing person. I consider her my friend, my hero, my everything.”

— Jerry Young

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“My oldest daughter lives in Michigan, and I used to meet her out in Las Vegas once a year. One time while we were out there my son called and said, ‘Well, dad had an accident.’

“He was in San Francisco driving a truck with a buddy. He was up on top getting ready to unload and he fell off the trailer. You know those yellow concrete post things? He fell on them and then onto the cement.

“So I rented a car, left Las Vegas and drove all night for 10 hours to get to San Francisco. As soon as my daughter heard that he got put on life support, she came out to be with me.

“He had broken both of his hips, cracked his ribs and punctured his lungs, and he had a fractured skull. I think that’s what killed him.

“He was unloading at a plant when he got hurt. I probably could have sued, but I didn’t. I just didn’t think it was the right thing to do. These things just happen sometimes.

“I got his Social Security and workman’s comp check, which isn’t big, either, but I’ll make it on that. Money isn’t everything.”

— Judith Shinn

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The post Freak accident ends their long marriage appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I’m originally from New York. I came to Texas to visit my brother, who was just getting out of the Air Force. It was supposed to be a three-week visit, but he moved back home and I stayed.

“I met my wife here. She served me my first Texas barbecue sandwich. It was one of those first sighting things. We hit it off right from the start, and we’ve been together now for 36 wonderful years. She’s the love of my life. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Who is that on your hat?
“That’s my granddaughter, Sydney. She’ll tell you, like Sydney, Australia. I spoil her. That’s my job and I do it very well. This is an older picture. She just turned 13. I keep her picture on my hat. That way, she’s always on my mind.”

— Steve Milne

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“I never wanted to have kids. I never wanted a woman who already had kids. But I met my wife, Aida, who is eight years older than me, and she just changed me.

“Sometimes it takes someone who is more mature to change an immature person. Looking at myself in the mirror, I could truly see how much work I needed to do to change myself. It was a lot of work.

“I’m stronger now than I’ve probably ever been in my life. My job gives me the ability to take care of my family, and to help my mom and my sister when I can. I never really had that before.

“My mom, she was one of those hard-working ladies. She was by herself. I didn’t have a dad growing up. It was my grandma who really raised me because my mom, she had to work two jobs to support me.

“Seeing her work so hard is really what helped me realize what I had to do when I had a kid of my own. I knew I had to either work two jobs or have one where I get plenty of hours to take care of my family.

“Now my goal is to make enough money to buy us a house. That would be another big step toward living the American dream.”

— Tyler Housley

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The post Personal changes help make him a family man appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was married for 27 years. She died two months ago from asbestosis. She got it from me and her other husband when we were working at this plant in Longview, Texas. She was washing our clothes when we brought them home. In 2005, she found out she had COPD, and then they found out she had asbestosis. It goes in like a big fish hook and it can’t come out. It scars your lungs.

“We hadn’t been together since 2005. I’ve always been married to her, but I haven’t lived with her since then.”

How did you learn she had died?
“I was thinking about her, so I called where she worked and asked for her or her old man. They said, ‘Well, you can talk to Jerry in about two hours, but Ruth Ann passed away a couple of weeks ago.’ I was shocked. I also was pissed that nobody called to let me know.”

— Kenneth Wayne Fulton

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