Support Tom’s Burial: A Loving Husband’s Final Request By Jamie Sides

Tom and I had gotten together after my first had divorced me sneakily. I hadn’t seen it coming. Anyways, I wasn’t looking for nobody and didn’t want nobody, I was crushed. My oldest son had said, ‘Mom, you need someone to love you and he will give you that southern love.’ I proceeded to tell him, ‘Yeah, OK, whatever.’ So Tom had come over with Robert and he had invited me to go to lunch. I came up with an excuse and told him I haven’t been feeling good, maybe next week. So next week came and I accepted. It was a lovely lunch at a homely place. Then he took me down to the mouth of Thompson Creek and we, well he caught crawdads and fished and played a bit in the river. We started to kiss but he held back. That was our first date and it was around the middle of July. (This July would have been 7 years.) He had taken me home and he kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘See you tomorrow after work.’ I was hoping he would come in but he had been such a gentleman. Well, getting to know this man, he had witnessed how my oldest son had treated me and got his own way, also how my brother looked to him as an able body to work. He saw the way they had treated me and I was very tired and worn out from years of this type of abuse. I’m trying to get to the reason for help in his burial, I have 3 weeks. Garden City told me the cheapest to bury him is $3800. So time is clicking. So anyways, we had gotten to know each other more and more. I had never, never in a few relationships that I did have, Tom was my fourth relationship and I have never had anyone love me for who I was and didn’t make fun of me. And no matter what I did through the years of knowing Tom, he never, not once, laughed at me. I can say with actually believing that he truly loves me. He showed me true love. I would have never known, I’m fifty-two and my Tom was 66, (Good die young). I asked him one time with one of our talks, to please take my garbage out and he did. Nobody has done that for me, my lover, my family, I mean NOBODY! As the years passed us by, I wanna and have thanked Tom for showing me real love. He was the kindest and the most wonderful man in my world. Anyways, the last year and a half of our marriage, Tom had been complaining of headaches. Tom didn’t go to doctors and he never complained. He went through a whole lot of changes. He even had a stroke. He would sit for hours in a day in his shop, working his hand and leg to get it back to normal. I didn’t stop him because I knew what he was doing. I said to myself, that is one of the strongest men I have ever known. Most give up and their hand turns in, etc. Not Thomas himself, a go-getter, a fighter. He finally went to the doctor and she told him it’s all the same symptoms of a stroke but he didn’t have a stroke, it was his neuropathy. I asked her, ‘Aren’t you going to check his head again?’ I said he doesn’t complain and these headaches he’s getting are getting worse. So she didn’t see any need for a CAT scan. We proceeded with these changes with Tom and I could see it in his eyes, he knew something wasn’t right. I also. On Jan. 17th, early morning all night long, he looked at me and said, ‘I’m ready to go to the ER.’ And there we have it. The doctor, whatever she was, she had whispered in Tom’s ear and told him with all of the not so good going on with you; I will tell you, you recovered quite well with your stroke. So we got home, made appointments for MRI and the neurologists, all would have been completed Wednesday night. We went and had the MRI done and the tech can’t say either or but as she was pushing Tom in the wheelchair she looked at me and said, ‘He is following up, right?’ I said yes and she said good. The neurologist had called the next morning and told me there’s no need to come to his appointment the next day, that all he has to go see is his primary for comfort measures. I broke but stayed strong for Tom. I didn’t tell him other than we didn’t have to go to Missoula, just go see his primary, so we had an appointment the next day at 11. Now Tom and I were not expecting for him to say, ‘He doesn’t have 6 months.’ Wow, what do you say. All I can say, brain cancer is fast with a decline every day. From walking one day to non-weight bearing the next. I don’t personally believe he deserved a death like that, I prayed every day for God to give it to me. He didn’t even make it 5 months. I do thank our Lord to not make him suffer. So I hope I didn’t bore you too much but Tom and I don’t have any life insurance and he doesn’t want to be cremated, he wants to be buried. I would like to honor his last wish. I’m praying for all who donate to this, our God will pour out a blessing in your lives that you don’t have any more room to receive it. Like it is written in the Bible, Malachi 3:10. I want to thank each and every one for reading and/or donating to this matter. I’m praying for all. One more thing just so you all can realize that in a moment of time your life can be turned upside down and never will be the same, so treat your lover like it was your first kiss each and every day. Don’t say or do anything that you will regret later on. God bless you all!