“She’s still with me, in my memories and my never-ending love for her. She always will be.”
From the moment he met her, she changed his life for the better. He told her she gave his life meaning and purpose. And later, when their two daughters were born, his life was complete. She gave him everything he has and then she died.
Jon Turner met his wife Rach 22 years ago when they were both working at Monmore Green Stadium (greyhound racing) in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom. He told mirror.co.uk that they met “in a paddock, surrounded by dogs,” and that he gave his wife a “plaster” after she cut her hand.
‘That gave us an excuse to start talking and, two weeks later, I built up the courage to ask her out for a drink,” Turner told the website. They started dating, later settled in the West Midlands and “had their first daughter Jessica,” the story said.
In October, 2010, they visited Rach’s sister Sarah, who lived on the gold Coast in Australia, the story said. They married on the beach with “Sarah, Rach’s other sister Emma and her partner Dan, as guests,” according to mirror.co.uk. A year later, their second daughter Freya was born.
“Life felt perfect,” Jon told the website.
their world collapses
In July, 2015, Rach found a lump in her breast. She was 39. “Two months later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had already spread to the lymph nodes,” according to the website. “Our happy little world collapsed,” Jon said.
Jon told the website that he was “terrified of what might lay ahead,” but he said that “Rach was more worried about me and the girls than herself.”
But, he noted in the article, his wife “wiped her tears away, stood up and made a declaration that she would never cry over cancer again and her “smile returned.”
“That really was the first and last time she let cancer take her tears, told the online newspaper. But, like many women before her who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, “it was horrible for her to comprehend not being around for the girls as they got older.”
“I knew her well enough to know the smile masked her fears, but she wanted to be strong for our daughters because she knew what strength they’d need,” he told the website.
Time runs out
When the cancer was first diagnosed, the couple told their daughters that their mother “had a poorly boobie and doctors were trying to make her better.”
She began intensive chemotherapy, but the cancer spread to her brain. She had “radiotherapy and a mastectomy, but by then the cancer “had spread to her lungs, then her bones,” never letting up, the story said.
“But while I was crumbling, Rach dealt with death as she dealt with life – smiling her beautiful smile,” Jon said in the story.
By October 2017, the couple knew “Rach could not win the battle,”
and they had to tell their daughters, who were then nine and six, “the brutal truth.”
‘We took them out for dinner and told them Mummy wasn’t going to get better,” Jon told the website. “They both cried.”
“Jess asked difficult questions about what would happen to Rach and what would happen to them, but Rach had the answers,” Jon added. He said she explained “she’d be going to heaven and that I, with the help of lots of amazing family and friends, would always look after” them.
At that point, Rach “quickly grew so ill she had to go into a hospice.” The story said that Jon brought their daughters to visit their mother every day until she was “heavily sedated.” Then, because “she was no longer Rach,” he decided “not to bring the children to the hospice again.”
“I wanted them to have memories of her smile, her hugs and kisses, not Rach deteriorating,” he told the website.
never-ending love after death
On January 4, 2018, Rach died. “My rock, my best friend, my soulmate – gone,” Jon said in the story. But he feels that she is still with him.
He said that a week after she died, he “was staring out the kitchen window, thinking about her and how he “used to run up behind her and wrap my arms around her.” He said, “We called it our ninja hug.”
Then an amazing thing happened. He said that he was “standing there alone with tears welling in my eyes as I said out loud: ‘I miss you Rach.'”
“In that moment, I felt arms around my waist,” Jon said in the article. “I felt the warmth of her love. She was giving me a ninja hug.”
“She’s still with me, in my memories and my never-ending love for her. She always will be.”
Single Parent
Now, as a single parent, “he believes Rach is helping him raise their daughters.” He told the website, “I can hear Rach in my head when I’m chatting to the girls.”
He said, “I joke that I’ll always know what to do if I just embrace my inner Rach.”
She gave him everything he has, and then she died. But even though she is no longer with him, the love they shared, and the life they led, help him as he and his daughters learn to live without her.
Read more about Jon and his daughters as they create a new life without Rach.
