CARROLLTOWN —
Three times, Rose (Murphy) Williams, 60, of Carrolltown had to give the love of her life bad news about cancer.
The first two times she had to tell her husband, Blaine, that she had breast cancer.
Then last year, she had to tell him he had esophageal cancer.
She had expected he would outlive her. After all, she had been told in 2009 that she had stage IV breast cancer.
But in December, an ailment for which he had undergone several months of treatment for a probable heart condition turned out to be cancer.
Less than a week later, he was dead.
“I couldn’t imagine him dying before me,” Williams said.
The couple met at a fire hall dance.
She was 16 and he was in the Navy.
“He was so handsome,” Williams said.
The search was over for both of them.
“There was only him,” Williams said. “No one else for me – ever.”
The young sailor was equally smitten.
“All he wanted was just to be with me,” she said.
They married, had two sons, six grandchildren and a great-grandson.
They worked hard – he as a coal miner and she for a time worked at the Carrolltown Sheetz convenience store.
The years ticked by, but their love for each other did not change.
Williams once asked her husband if, after 43 years, he still felt the same about her
“He said, ‘Rosie, every time I look at you I see a 16-year-old girl with long black hair,’ ” Williams recalled.
When Blaine Williams got sick, he refused to quit his job.
“He worked up to two weeks before he died so I would have health insurance,” his widow said.
“He never complained. He told our parish priest he would give up his life for mine. You can’t have a greater love than that.
“He was a wonderful, wonderful man. I was very blessed,” Williams said.
“You can’t imagine how much I miss him.”
Her initial diagnosis was made following a mammogram that showed a very small spot in her right breast.
After 32 radiation treatments, all appeared clear, but the cancer moved to her left breast – and this time, the disease had spread.
“It’s all through my bones,” Williams said. “I have tumors in my skull.”
A patient at Windber Medical
Center, she has high praise for her oncologist, Dr. Michael Voloshin,
and the staff.
“You feel like you’re with family,” she said. “They’re very compassionate. They know their jobs.”
Williams said she feels her choice to go to Windber was a “gift from God.”
Although she hasn’t beaten the disease, Williams has a habit of looking for silver linings.
“I’m never going to be cancer-free and I know that, but I have been given time I would not otherwise have had.”
She said she depends on her faith in God, “that’s my No. 1 thing,” and the support of her family and friends.
Her youngest son calls her every day.
One of 11 children, she also has frequent contact with siblings and a close friend she has had since junior high school.
She enjoys working on scrapbooks and loves to eat out.
“We eat at every church breakfast or dinner in the area. We hit them all,” she said with a laugh.
Williams said she gets out every chance she can.
“I keep buying clothes like I’m going to be here 10 years from now. Twenty years from now,” she said. “You just have to keep going.
“I wear my wig and my jewelry. Every day whether I am going out or not, I get dressed up.
“I don’t whine. I don’t complain. It just brings people down and I don’t think it does much for you either.”
Above all, Williams keeps a positive attitude.
“You have to believe that, no matter what, you’re going to be OK,” she said.
“I know the truth (about the cancer), but I also know that there are things that are no one knows. Things that are invisible.”
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