Claudia’S Embrace: A True Story of Finding Love, Enduring Loss, and Building a Legacy

Copyright © 2016 Joseph T. Chopko.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-0778-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0779-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0777-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016908019

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/18/2016

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Section 1: Love

1: The Beginning

2: Building a Relationship

3: Move to the States

4: Moving and Growing a Family

5: Loving Wife

Section 2: Cancer

6: Initial Diagnosis

7: Patient Advocacy

8: Understanding Cancer

9: Conventional Treatments

10: Cannabis: Truth or Fiction?

11: Response to Treatment

12: Work Ethic

13: Irreparable Damage

14: Hospice

15: Final Moments

16: Cancer’s Reach

Section 3: Responding and Coping

17: Coping Strategies

18: Talking to Children

19: Helping Children Grieve

Section 4: Aspects of the Divine

20: Interconnected Lives

21: Spiritual Development

22: Spiritual Encounters

23: Community

24: Spiritual Transformation

Section 5: Moving Forward After Loss

25: Grief

26: Life After Claudia

27: Keeping My Promise

Epilogue

Others’ Perspectives

Lori

John

Vivian

Endnotes

This book is dedicated to my angel in disguise, Claudia Sanchez, who taught me the true meaning of love and gave me two precious children.

And to my children, Sebastian and Nyah: May you always remember your mother with a smile on her face. Whenever you feel alone, remember, Mommy is a part of you, and you’re a part of her. She will always remain in your heart and you will forever remain in hers.

Acknowledgments

I would like to especially acknowledge my family and friends for all of their love, support, comfort and guidance. Mom, I love you to death. Thanks for believing in me and nurturing and inspiring me to follow my dreams. Thank you also for your financial assistance with the book. To my younger sister, Lori, who took care of her older brother and nurtured Claudia like only a sister could. You were always there to listen, to offer a roof over my head, and you ultimately stood by my side up to the moment of Claudia’s death. To my brother-in-law John, for providing guidance and gourmet meals to satisfy my appetite and for opening your home to my family when Claudia was undergoing treatment. I would also like to thank Lorraine, John, and Vivian for sharing their testimonials to aid the reader in viewing the story from a different perspective, and my sister Susan for making sure Claudia received access to the best medical care in the country and for being present during the most difficult times. Thank you.

To my extended family: Sandra and Tommy, Paul and Debby, and Tom and Heather, thank you for your physical, emotional, and financial support throughout Claudia’s illness and the attention and nurturing you gave to our children as if they were your own. For all of these gifts, I am eternally grateful. To my best friend Tom who was always there to listen and offer his loving friendship as the manuscript developed, thank you. To my friend Danielle for providing encouragement and inspiration during the most difficult time in my life.

For being the hands and feet of Christ throughout Claudia’s illness and thereafter, I would like to thank Pastor Rick, Pastor Shannon, and the entire congregation of Cornerstone United Methodist Church (UMC) in Newnan, Georgia. I am especially grateful to the Revival Sunday School Group and the UMC men’s and women’s groups. Tina, thank you for your inspiration, friendship, prayers, and presence throughout Claudia’s illness. Also, Reverend Mason and the entire congregation of Union Presbyterian Church in Newburgh, New York, thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and deeds.

Thanks to Emily for your friendship and willingness to watch the children and take them to Carpenter’s Kids and Vacation Bible School so I could write, attend my Grief Share group, and get some needed alone time, thank you. Thank you Camille for your unwavering friendship and for fulfilling a promise you made to a dying woman (your best friend) to always be there for her and her children as a godmother. Thank you David for your friendship, prayers, loving presence, and commitment to Christ. You were instrumental in helping two lost souls see the light. Thank you Vivian and Bryan for you friendship, love, prayers, and especially your willingness to help us rent our home so we could focus on Claudia’s treatment. Vivian, thank you for babysitting Nyah so I could focus on the manuscript or take a needed break. Thank you to the entire staff at ESG accounting, especially Marcella and Iverlys for being a friend to Claudia and for being present until the end of her illness.

Thank you to the entire community of Sharpsburg, especially the Sharpsburg Mom’s Club, the communities of Newnan, and Peachtree City as well: without you there would be no story to tell. Thank you for demonstrating through your actions the true meaning of love. For my friends at Grief Share—you know who you are—who walked alongside me, providing encouragement and inspiration to pursue my writing, thank you.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my best friend and coworker Monica for knowing me so well and suggesting I write a book to help me through the grief process. Also, you were there when I needed someone to watch the children, and you offered me a shoulder to cry on. To Gordon for helping me transform a series of essays and walking along with me as the manuscript slowly evolved. For your friendship, writing expertise, editing talents, and dedication to the process, thank you. For commenting on and editing the manuscript to ensure readability and content-appropriate material, thank you to Paul and Debby. Your uplifting comments helped me realize I had a story to tell and that I was telling it well. For reading, commenting, and offering suggestions to improve the manuscript, I would like to thank John C. Sr.

A special thank you to the editors at Kirkus Editorial and Scribendi, whose attention to detail and professional expertise greatly improved the manuscript. To the entire staff at LifeRich Publishing, thank you for making my dream of becoming an author a reality and for providing a platform from which I can spread Christ’s message of love to assist others on their journeys.

Thank you Renee for listening, offering assistance with the manuscript; especially with your help with the title, and your expertise in designing the cover. For those individuals whose contributions I failed to mention, every deed, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant, is significant to another’s life.

Prologue

During the spring of 2004, at the age of thirty-nine, I planned an expedition to trek in the Dolomites of Northern Italy as well as in the Alps of Switzerland. More than six months had been dedicated to planning and preparing for the trip, obtaining the maps, studying the routes, purchasing the required equipment, and learning some basic Italian. As the saying goes, it’s not about the destination, but the journey. I thoroughly enjoyed imagining the journey in my mind, though I never got the chance to reach my destination. Life had another journey and destination in mind.

When a man approaches forty years old and finds himself without a wife and family, and has no money in the bank, he takes a long, hard look in the mirror and makes a decision about what he wants in life. That was me ten years ago, living in a one-bedroom apartment above an Italian restaurant, with no plan or prospects in sight for achieving what I truly desired. In time, a thought popped into my head: buy a house. A high school biology teacher’s salary prequalified me for a $150,000 loan toward the purchase of a new home. Reality set in when I began looking at homes in the Hudson Valley area of New York, post 9/11. The market in 2005 was at a high point—$150,000 would not be enough to purchase even a shack anywhere within a forty-mile radius of where I worked.

I traveled across the eastern border of New York into Pennsylvania to look at homes within my budget. A cute, two-bedroom ranch with a wood-burning stove, just a five-minute walk from a small lake, appealed to me and became the start of my quest toward stability. I set up my bachelor pad and purchased a canoe and kayak with which to enjoy the lake. The house was in the middle of the woods, in a hemlock forest, a little off the beaten path. To quell some of my loneliness, I went to the local pound and rescued a yellow Labrador, whom I named Missy. She became my constant companion.

One night, the high school where I was teaching biology and chemistry was having a morale party at a local hotel. While sitting with a group of friends and enjoying a few beers, a beautiful woman, who would forever change my life, walked through the door. Little did I know at the time that she would become my wife and that we would have two precious children together. The moment I laid eyes on her, I instantly fell in love. For the first time in my life, I saw something that I wanted (a wife and a family), and I was going to obtain it at all costs.

Everything stored up in my romantic arsenal would be unleashed in my attempts to woo this woman. Nothing was going to hold me back from my pursuit. Learning to speak Spanish and traveling halfway across the globe to a foreign land and culture were some of the challenges and highlights of my journey. Asking a woman to leave her country, family, friends, and essentially abandon everything she had known her entire life to come live with me in a two-bedroom house in the middle of the Pennsylvanian woods was asking a lot. But that is exactly what happened. Claudia and I fell in love; she made the sacrifice of leaving everything behind for me, to be with me, to get married, and to raise a family together in a land with a foreign culture and language.

It was a difficult adjustment for both of us—communicating and relating from two distinct cultural backgrounds. But with much effort and love, we made it work. After our first child, Sebastian, was born, I quit my teaching job to pursue an opportunity working for the government. We moved temporarily to Florida for nine months, and then Nyah came along before we permanently relocated to Sharpsburg, Georgia.

Claudia strove to learn the language and adjust to a different way of life. Despite possessing a master’s degree in industrial engineering, she struggled with finding employment suitable to her skills and talents. Although she was an extremely educated, talented woman, her degree was from a foreign country, and she spoke Spanish. Instead of being an asset, it became a detriment, especially in the Deep South, which was dominated by Caucasian males who were threatened by an intelligent woman who was smarter and more educated than they were, and a Latina no less. For the first time in her life, Claudia faced discrimination because of her language and culture while she tried to gain a foothold in the workforce. She fought her way tooth and nail to prove herself, taking almost seven years to find a job in the field of study that she loved.

We had just purchased a new home, and Claudia found a job that she enjoyed, when we received shocking news that sent us both into a tailspin. Neither of us could ever have imagined something so devastating and life altering: Claudia had been diagnosed with one of the most aggressive forms of cancer: non–small cell adenocarcinoma lung cancer.

This is the story of the fifteen-month journey that led us into uncharted territory, where together, we learned the true meaning of love. We had to face our deepest and darkest fears, endure unimaginable suffering (both physically and emotionally), display relentless courage, and learn healthy responses to illness, suffering, dying, death, and loss. This is the story of a mother and wife who sacrificed everything for those she loved so dearly, in order to try to shelter her family from her pain, suffering, and eventual death. It is the story of a man who would try everything in his God-given power to attempt to save the woman he loved so dearly, before physically surrendering and placing her life in God’s hands.

And finally, it’s also a story of hope: the questioning, strengthening, and transforming of faith, and growing closer to the divine, by experiencing God’s grace manifested as the unconditional love and support we received from our families and the community.

I am trained as a biologist and as an educator of both children and adults, and I possess more than twenty years’ experience in designing, developing, and delivering instruction in the agricultural, biological, and chemical sciences. My ultimate objective for writing this book is to share the individual lessons I learned and the lessons we learned as a couple and, ultimately, to allow the reader to view illness, suffering, dying, and death through the eyes of our children. Throughout the story, textboxes are included that contain helpful tips as well as sample dialogue, which may prove useful. My hope for you, the reader, is that you take to heart this compelling, truthful story full of raw emotion that will educate, offer inspiration, and encourage you as you face your own trials and tribulations on life’s journey.

Section 1

Love

1

The Beginning

A radiant light has enveloped me with the power to transform my soul.

Penetrating deep into my heart, it courses through my veins like an endlessly meandering river.

Unconfined by boundaries, on a timeless journey, it bathes my tissues, soothes my sorrows, and fills me with promise and joy.

Waves of tranquility ripple through the primal universe as two spirits engage in an ethereal dance and become one.

First Encounter

It was a cold, blustery February evening—February 18, 2005, to be exact. I was planning an early fortieth birthday present for myself—a trip to Prague. I wanted to trace my roots, and the city’s eclectic mix of fourteenth-, nineteenth-, and modern twenty-first-century style had always appealed to me. The challenge of seeing if I could hold my own in a city where I did not speak the language greatly intrigued me. The previous year, I had spent three months in a tenth-grade Italian class attempting to learn as much Italian as I could prior to visiting a region of Italy where little English was spoken. Although I successfully acquired some ability to make small talk with the locals and gained access to areas that were off limits to most, I was still not comfortable speaking a foreign language. This trip to Prague was an opportunity to challenge myself in a country where I possessed limited knowledge of the language: Czech. Being single, my friends all teased me about coming back with a Czech or Russian bride. Legend has it that the women of Prague are exquisitely beautiful.

That night of February 18, 2005, the high school where I taught tenth-grade biology and chemistry to a mix of inner-city and suburban kids, full of hormones and with little interest in biology (except for reproduction), was having a morale party. Apparently, teachers attempting to teach teenagers full of raging hormones need a break now and again. Since I was one of those individuals in need of a little respite, I showed up at the Clarion Inn in Newburgh, New York. While sitting with a group of colleagues, relaxing and indulging in a few drinks, a group of friends walked through the door. Immediately, I turned around in my seat and laid eyes on the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. You’ve heard it before, but it’s not a cliché; it’s true. The moment I saw Claudia, something instantly changed inside of me. Destiny had crossed my path, and there was no returning to the life I once knew. She possessed long black curly hair, a slightly olive complexion, and the most captivating almond-shaped brown eyes.

A large group of people arrived and the tables were connected to accommodate the group. Call it sheer luck or fate, but this woman with the long black curly hair and captivating almond-shaped eyes sat right next to me. The dilemma confronting me: what to do next. I felt like a twelve-year-old boy trying to garner the nerve to ask the cute girl to the dance. What would you have done if someone so beautiful sat next to you? I did what any normal thirty-nine-year-old single guy would do when a beautiful woman sits next to him, I froze. Not really—I was full of confidence about going to Prague, so I did the next best thing, I said hello and introduced myself. She told me her name was Claudia and that she was from Chile, here visiting her sister and brother-in-law. I did a quick memory search and recalled, Oh yeah, Chile is one of those countries in South America where I think they speak Spanish. Remember, I was approaching the big four-O, so the memory banks weren’t working as quickly as they had been when I