Coping with loss is so hard for people in the SurvivorNet community, and we all have different ways to honor memory. It’s been nearly one year since Beth Chapman passed away from stage 4 lung cancer, and in her honor, Duane “Dog” Chapman is inviting fans to celebrate her incredible life with an ocean side memorial and many prayers.
On June 26, the Chapman family will host “For the Love of Beth,” a memorial in Waimanalo Beach, Hawaii to honor one year since Beth Chapman passed away from cancer. The event, planned by Chapman’s daughter Cecily, will include a community paddle boarding in the evening and a prayer service on the beach. For fans who want to honor Beth locally, Chapman says on Instagram people should take a picture of themselves outdoors and use the hashtag #fortheloveofbeth.
Read MoreDuane “Dog” Chapman says medical cannabis helped Beth manage cancer treatment side effects
Coping With Losing A Spouse To Cancer
After losing a spouse to cancer, it's common for people to go through feelings like grief and anger. However, for some, the experience makes them advocates for more cancer research, and raise awareness around the disease. This was the case for Doug Wendt, who lost his wife Alice to ovarian cancer after 25 years of marriage.
Doug used his experience watching Alice battle ovarian cancer by spreading awareness. He created an organization in Alice's honor, the Cardinal Cancer Foundation, with the mission of empowering women to take control of their health and to report and question symptoms when they have them. He also said that the outcome for his wife, who battled the disease for two years, may have been different if her symptoms had been looked into earlier.
Doug Wendt, who lost his wife to ovarian cancer, started a foundation in her honor
"We don't know what the outcome could have been if she had addressed [the symptoms] earlier," Doug said. "Or if I had demanded that she address them earlier, as a husband who was more involved and more proactive … That's really the focus of the Cardinal Foundation. Yes, we want to help women facing ovarian cancer, [but] we'd really rather they not get it at all. We'd also rather that if they do have to face it, they face it earlier rather than later, and that means that we all have to be a lot more attentive to the real health needs of women in our society."
Similarly, John Duberstein lost his wife, writer Nina Riggs, to metastatic triple negative breast cancer. Even though the conversations about her disease were difficult for Duberstein to have, he knew they were important to Nina and it ended up helping him cope with her diagnosis.
“I did not want to talk about what was going to happen with me after Nina died, Nina is the one that really brought it up,” Duberstein says. “She brought it up a number of times. She wanted to make sure that I knew that she was OK– not only OK but that she really wanted me to have another relationship or relationships after she was gone. In retrospect, I can’t even explain how glad I am that I had that.”
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