Honeymoon

"Tell me a story."

It's 2007, and Brenda asks this of Cameron while they're on the phone, a playful dare to the man she met randomly and recently through the online game Farmville.

That they're even talking in real life is itself improbable; she never expected anything more than a few courteous chats through the app with her new friend, some occasional help from him building her farm, vice versa, please and thank you, the end.

She's convinced he'll ignore the challenge she's offered in jest at the end of a long day, when theirs is the last voice they want to hear at night. Surely he's going to hang up now. Surely he won't follow through.

But that's not who Cameron is. An electrician by trade and caterer by choice, he's worked all his life to make a better one for himself and others. He's driven and focused, doesn't know how to stop because he's got too many good life dreams keeping him awake.

So of course he steps up and tells her a story. Its details are hardly memorable -- neither of them can recall any specifics whatsoever -- but the fact that he followed through at all, improvised something out of thin air, when sleep is the last to-do of a long day, just to make her happy, just to make her smile...well, that's the real point and plot for her and him.

Conversations lead to real life visits, and at the end of their first one, Brenda knew another story was about to be told, one they would write together. "From the moment he walked up my sidewalk, I was like, 'yep, that's my husband.'"

Cuddled up together on the couch, they both giggle at a shared memory that's still fresh after 18 years, how she knew this never-gonna-get-married man would change his tune and be the best part of her story. She was right. He knew it.

That is how Brenda and Cameron began. They couldn't fathom what was next.

It's summer of 2023, and Cameron knows something is wrong with him. He doesn't know what exactly, but he doesn't want to deal with fully, at least not yet. The trip to California with Brenda -- now his wife, always the best part of his story -- is all they can think about, all they want to deal with.

It's a much-needed vacation for both, time together under the sun, still newlyweds, tending and nurturing love sown and grown over the decade and a half they've been the best parts of each others lives.

He can't put off the doctor forever. Brenda won't allow it. Cameron makes the appointment. Scans scheduled. Tests endured.

They wait. They wonder. They pray for good news.

No.

You have prostate cancer.

Stage 4, to be exact, with an aggressiveness that almost defies comprehension:

A non-elevated Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) level for men age 40 and over should fall around 2.5 - 4.0 mg/mL.

Cameron's PSA level is 5,000.

His diagnosis is what's called de novo, which means that by the time his cancer has been unmasked, it's spread to other parts of the body. In Cameron's case, it's already in his bones and lymph nodes.

"At stage 4, there's no cure, no remission," Brenda says. "You have the time that God gives you and you try to make the best of it."

By that fall, their best is a nightmare.

Cameron can't work, so half of their income disappears. Brenda's picking up as many hours as she can at work to fill the void, but her company recently cut overtime.

The bills -- car payments, rent, electric, phone and water and power, credit cards -- pile up. So do the overdue notices. And the penalties. And the late fees.

By their estimate, they're between $30,000 - $40,000 in the hole, and that doesn't include any of Cameron's medical bills. The foundation of their lives is crumbling under the stress.

But then Brenda sees the online notification about this new TriUnity Foundation, supported by Altra Federal Credit Union, her own credit union. She's fills out the application on a lark, expecting nothing but more bad news.

And like just like Ella Mae, Brenda thinks LeAnn Case, TriUnity's Board Chair, is playing a joke when she calls Brenda with the good news.

"And I'm at work one night and I'm like, who is this? I don't know who this is. And normally if I get a call from a number I don't know, I'm not answering. So I'm like, let's just find out.

I answer and I'm like, this is who? LeAnn, who? From where? And she [says], 'I just want you to know that we selected you guys for this grant.'

And I'm like, you have got to be kidding me, because I was just talking about something at work with my table partner as far as bills and going through things and figuring things out.

I am freaking out because there's no way. This is not possible. Are you serious? Are you playing? I'm in tears. I don't want to cry, but I'm going to cry. I am not crying, but I am. And it was so unbelievable."

Yes, the grant gives them financial help they desperately need - payoff delinquent payday loans, catch up on car payments, put them in the position where they don't have to stress about buying groceries or keeping their phone plans paid and connected.

And yes, it brings emotional relief, a weight lifting from both of them because, in Brenda's words, "debt is our middle name." That relief is priceless; the mental distress brought on by crushing debt causes, quite literally, more physical pain.

But there are benefits that transcend the physical and the financial, the here and now, that the grant gives them the peace to fully experience once again: faith and perspective and courage, priceless blessings best explained by Cameron himself:

"God told me when I found out about this cancer, 'You on this path, this is what we going to do. I'm going to drive. I want you to sit right here on this passenger side. Take notes, listen to me.'

He said, 'The thing is, you got people you're going to take with you.'

He said, 'Even though you got cancer, you're going to be fine.'

He said, 'I want you to grab your wife's hand. You take her with you.'

And it's been a lot. It's been tough. I found myself dealing with stuff -- personally, physically, mentally -- that I've never thought in my life that I ever had to deal with. And by his grace and his mercy I have, and it's made me stronger.

I feel like my purpose is...to reach out to people and let 'em know what's going on. Not just with him, with the cancer, with everything, with life.

You only live once. You only get one chance of life and you don't take it for granted. You gotta love. You got to treat people the way you want to be treated. And I've always did that, but now it's like two times as more. You know what I mean?"

The world has thrown its worst at Cameron and Brenda, threatened their lives and livelihood, twisted to breaking everything and everyone they hold dear.

Yet here they stand together, hands and hearts safe in one another's, wearing matching t-shirts that commemorate their relationship milestones in bazillion-point font and sported with so much I LOVE BEING MARRIED TO YOUUUUUUU pride that you'd swear they were still on their honeymoon.

And maybe they are. It's easy to see why:

Terminal cancer has sparked maybe not a formal renewing of Cameron and Brenda's vows, but certainly a recommitment to them. They have lived their harder halves, are living them, will live them.

It is precisely because of that shared pain that they take nothing for granted now, starting with each other, the online friends who, with Cameron's improvised once upon a time, became each other's future and forever.

They are truly two who have become one, two who have stayed one because that's what love does. That's when a wedding becomes a marriage, when I do becomes I did, becomes I would do it all over again.

And that is a story worth celebrating.

Honeymoon

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