[PHOTOS] A Husband's Courageous Decision To Capture His Wife’s Painful Battle With Cancer
Angelo and Jennifer’s story is tragic, but it’s in the face of a tragedy such as this that we rise above. In Angelo’s case, he has started an organization to help women with their financial struggles during their trials with breast cancer.
By Sadho Ram — 26 Oct 2013, 12:50 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
For Angelo and Jennifer, it was love at first site. The kind of that we only get to witness in movies and in books!
They had met in Cleveland, Jen worked at a bar, Angelo was in school. Jen went off to New York City where she took a job with L’Oreal, and eventually, Angelo visited her and confessed how his heart was bursting.
palmbeachpost.com
Angelo says: ” I couldn’t work up the courage to tell Jen that I couldn’t live without her. My heart finally prevailed and, like a schoolboy, I told Jen ‘I have a crush on you.’ To the relief of my pounding heart, Jen’s beautiful eyes lit up and she said ‘Me too!’”
viralnova.com
The battle began just five months after they were married in New York’s Central Park, in 2007. Jen was 36, Angelo was 35.
“I remember the exact moment,” Merendino recalls on his website, mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com.
slate.com“Jen’s voice and the numb feeling that enveloped me. That feeling has never left. I’ll also never forget how we looked into each other’s eyes and held each other’s hands. ‘We are together, we’ll be OK’.”
Her cancer had metastasized, meaning it had spread throughout her body. Amid the pain, the chemotherapy, one of the hard parts was seeing old friends keep their distance, Angelo said.
Less than 4 years after her diagnosis, Jennifer was dead. Yet her husband had chosen to document her experience of the disease in the way he knew best: by photographing it.
Angelo Merendino and his wife, Jennifer, in the photo series “The Battle We Didn’t Choose.”
Image via viralnova.comHis moving, monochrome images portray the “daily life” of a cancer sufferer, he says. “They humanise the face of cancer, on the face of my wife. They show the challenge, difficulty, fear, sadness and loneliness that we faced, that Jennifer faced, as she battled this disease.”
“We found that people didn’t know how to treat us, how to be there for us,” he said in an interview.
visualnews.com
The photography project began in part because of the distance they felt from those friends. They wanted them to know what was happening. So Jen started blogging
slate.comAfter four years of treatment, Jennifer suffered from side effects that left her in perpetual pain. A year before her death, she was reduced to using a walker to move around.
visualnews.com
She was in and out of hospital, often for 10 days at a time, and the couple did battle constantly with America’s private health insurance companies to get compensation. “Fear, anxiety and worries were almost constant,” Merendino writes.
“Throughout our battle we were fortunate to have a strong support group but we still struggled to get people to understand our day-to-day life and the difficulties we faced…"
thefrisky.com
He wanted to humanize the face of cancer on the face of his wife. These photos speak for themselves.
Angelo and Jennifer’s story is tragic, but it’s in the face of a tragedy such as this that we rise above. In Angelo’s case, he has started an organization to help women with their financial struggles during their trials with breast cancer.
ryot.org
