This was published 9 years ago
Couple's love story cut short by a nefarious criminal named Cancer
"It's not a cancer story, it's a love story. With some cancer."
The tag line for Nora McInerny's blog was true. There was a lot of love packed in to the five years she shared with her husband Aaron Purmont. But, in the end, there was also too much cancer in this love story.
Nora McInerny with her husband Aaron Purmont.Credit: myhusbandstumor.com
Only a year after the Minneapolis couple met in 2010, art director Aaron was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.
The pair were engaged in the glow of a heart-rate monitor and, for a while, it seemed like love might conquer all with the tumour retreating momentarily.
Cancer didn't stop the couple from having a son.Credit: myhusbandstumor.com
But cancer kept finding its way back to Aaron, each time more aggressive and debilitating.
Nora shared the intimate details of her husband's battle in a blog titled myhusbandstumor.com that quickly developed a huge following for its hilarious and heartbreaking snippets of life with cancer.
It seemed only fitting that before Aaron died, aged 35, he wrote his own obituary with his life partner, published on Sunday in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Aaron died "after complications from a radioactive spider bite that led to years of crime fighting and a years long battle with a nefarious criminal named Cancer, who has plagued our society for far too long," the obituary said.
The couple wrote Aaron's obituary together.Credit: myhusbandstumor.com
"Civilians will recognise him best as Spider-Man and thank him for his many years of service protecting our city.
"His family knew him only as a kind and mild-mannered Art Director, a designer of websites and t-shirt and concert posters who always had the right cardigan and the right thing to say (even if it was wildly inappropriate)."
'I love this man so damn much': Nora and Aaron horse around.Credit: myhusbandstumor.com
It ended by noting that Purmont is "survived by his … first wife Gwen Stefani."
Nora said she had never laughed or cried more in one sitting than when she wrote her husband's obituary with him.
"But I'm so glad we got to do this," she said. "I love this man so damn much."
Nora always made it clear that she knew the tumour would be lethal in the end.
The aggressive cancer, a Grade 4 glioblastoma, may have confined them to hospital beds and operating theatres for much of their five years together but it didn't stop them from giving birth to a son, Ralph, going on holidays and watching a ton of movies.
"We still went to work and paid our bills. We raised our son and cooked dinner (okay, we ordered in). We worked on our house and watched a ton of movies. We travelled, we went to shows (so many shows)," she said.
They even managed to take a "chemomoon" - a beach holiday to Belize three years after their wedding.
"Purm and I drank fruity drinks and went on hikes and explored the Mayan ruins and were just like any other young couple who brings their baby to a luxury resort," Nora wrote.
"Ralph experienced the ocean for the first time (not a fan) and had a drink at a swim-up bar (milk). We laid in hammocks and read books and at night, he and Aaron slept so soundly I checked their breathing to make sure they were both still alive and hadn't died of happiness."
But by early November, Aaron was in hospice care, struggling to breathe while watching Homeland in bed with his wife.
And then, at 2.43pm on November 25, the battle was over.
"It wasn't a war or a fight. Those things have rules," Nora wrote. "This was more like Aaron getting in the ring with the Mohammed Ali of cancers, and smiling for round after round after he got his teeth knocked out and his face rearranged.
Ding.
It ended today at 2:43pm, in the middle of a run-on sentence, my head on his heart and my arms around him in a hospital bed built for one, but perfect for the two of us."
Fairfax Media